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WANdisco party on hold

RESULT: The share price of WANdisco, a young UK tech firm, has more than doubled since its June IPO
October 4, 2012

Shares in young tech firm WANdisco (WAND) have been hot property since the Aim-traded company came to the market in June, having raised $26m (£16.2m) in an oversubscribed IPO.

IC TIP: Hold at 370p

There are good reasons to get excited about WANdisco. The company's licensed software allows servers, dotted in different parts of the world, to stay synchronised. So, when data changes are made locally, the changes can be seen immediately elsewhere. By allowing collaboration across distributed servers - WANdisco is an abbreviation of wide area network distributed computing - the Sheffield-based outfit allows multinational corporations to work more efficiently. Moreover, the company is sitting on patent-pending technology, DConE, which enables the continuous synchronisation between servers.

WANdisco can boast a number of blue-chip customers, such as HP, Intel, Wal-Mart, Lockheed Martin, John Deere and Sun Micro-Systems. Earlier this year, it made an important breakthrough in China, signing up Huawei, the country's largest supplier of telecoms equipment. And with a surge in cash bookings, up 57 per cent to $3.4m, the company is riding an impressive growth trajectory. "We can do even better in the third quarter," says chief executive David Richards, eyeing up the 'big data' market and a recently-strengthened sales team. "No one else can do what we do."

Broker Edison expects a full-year loss of $4.1m, narrowing to a loss of $1.3m next year and a profit of $1.1m in 2014, based on revenues of $11.3m.

WANdisco (WAND)
ORD PRICE:370pMARKET VALUE:£77m
TOUCH:365-375p12-MONTH HIGH:385pLOW: 180p
DIVIDEND YIELD:naPE RATIO:na
NET ASSET VALUE:75¢NET CASH:$21.9m                 

Half-year to 30 JunTurnover ($m)Pre-tax profit ($m)Earnings per share (¢)Dividend per share (¢)
20111.91-0.68-15.0nil
20122.91-3.64-31.0nil
% change+53---

£1=$1.61