Megabuyte - Technology sector intelligence

Monitise shows fruits of £5m annual mobile money R&D

Mobile money provider Monitise has announced a substantial upgrade of its technology platform and product offering (Monitise Globe), enhancing the existing mobile banking services as well as adding mobile wallet, payments, shopping, stock trading and financial account management capabilities. Readers can see our investment notes on Monitise here. Read more in Newswire Plus.

Probability benefits from iPhone effect

Mobile gambling provider Probability has issued an upbeat trading update, with demand picking up significantly after the recent launch of an iPhone app, operating costs now lower following the completion of a major technology upgrade, and with further falls in prospect following the recent award of a Gibralter gambling licence.  The company had hinted at the looming iPhone effect at the recent full year results (Premium Plus readers see here). See Newswire Plus for more.

Synchronica closes iseemedia acquisition and fund raise

Mobile email provider Synchronica has announced the close of its all-share iseemedia acquisition, which considerably enhances its client base and product offering, as well as removing a competitor (Premium Plus readers see here for our original analysis of the deal).  An associated fund raise, and the sale of an iseemedia subsidiary, has boosted the Synchronica coffers by £4.5m.  Synchronica currently has 86% of iseemedia shares and will now go through a statutory process to mop up the remaining 14% by year end.

Crimson Tide raises £0.55m

Sticking with today’s mobile dominated newsflow, we note that Crimson Tide, a provider of mobile data B2B solutions (not covered), has raised £0.55m for expansion and working capital purposes, against a market cap of £4.7m before the raise. The recent interims showed fairly static revenues of £0.7m at just EBITDA breakeven, but the company noted that despite a strong sales pipeline, growth was being constrained by lack of finance. We now look forward to see the company achieve growth with the new funds in the bank.

Year continues to plan for SDL

Translation and information management specialist SDL has issued an in-line trading update this morning covering the three months to September. Trading across both divisions seems to be continuing to plan with cross-selling a key feature in the Technology division. Within Translation Services, which was impacted to a greater degree by the downturn, the recovery continues, especially in North America and Asia. The recent acquisitions of Language Weaver and Xopus are said to be bedding in well and, overall, trading is on track to hit estimates for the year to December. SDL shares continue to break new ground having already trebled over the last two years and now trade on 19x current year earnings; a premium to the broader software sector but in line with other marketing and content management vendors.