4 October 2017 – acquisition
The company has announced the acquisition of Vendman Systems Ltd, an Enterprise Resource Planning and mobile software provider for unattended retailing, for a total consideration of up to £4.25m, payable in cash. The initial cash consideration payable is £2m on completion, with an earn-out element of up to £2.25m. Vendman develops, manages, and supports integrated software and mobile applications for the unattended retailing industry. Its solutions include stock control, pricing information, data management, account analysis and route planning. Unaudited accounts for the 12 months ended 31 March 2017 showed revenues of £1.8m, over 90% of which were recurring, and an operating profit of £0.27m with net assets of £0.28m. Given the share price rise we now believe that the attractive yield is overshadowed by the risk of profit taking from this level. We move our rating to HOLD.