Patsystems, the AIM-listed global supplier of electronic trading technology, is holdings its annual general meeting at 10.30 am today, 5th April, in London, UK.
At the meeting, Stewart Millman, Non Executive Chairman, will provide the following update on trading:
Highlights:
- 2006 trading in line with the Board's expectations
- Contract signed to supply Calyon Financial with Risk Informer technology
- The Board remains confident that Patsystems will make further progress in 2006 and meet market expectations for the full year
"I am pleased to announce that Patsystems has had an encouraging start to the year with the first quarter's results in line with our expectations. Against this background, the Board remains confident that the Company will meet market expectations for the full year and lay the groundwork for progress to continue in future years.
Business Update
As was anticipated, the sales opportunities with which we entered the financial year are starting to convert to closed business. I am delighted to report that Calyon Financial, one of our major customers, has selected Risk Informer for use across their futures and options broking business. The system will be used to monitor clients' risk in real-time across all their trading activities on the leading exchanges and to facilitate clients with direct electronic connections to these markets.
The feedback from Calyon Financial is very encouraging. They believe that deploying Risk Informer will allow them to provide greater flexibility to their clients while at the same time improving their intra-day risk controls. They were impressed by the capability of Risk Informer to scale, to support the increasingly real-time nature of their business, and the ease with which it can be extended to manage their specific needs.
The Risk Informer product is one of the offerings resulting from the acquisition of the Tamesis business in August 2005 and confirms the Board's belief that this acquisition would enhance the capability of Patsystems to serve existing and new customers.
We previously stated that establishment of user populations for our Pro-Mark trading systems were important to our growth plans for 2006, and despite a slow start in the first quarter, our expectations as to the size of the user population by the close of the year remain undiminished.
Activity within the trading systems part of our business is positive with a number of new J-Trader installations either in progress or completed.
Outlook
These and other opportunities, across the product portfolio, that we expect to close mean that the second half of 2006 is expected to be materially more profitable than the first half and thus also provide a solid base for 2007 and beyond.
The sales order pipeline for our risk, trading and exchange systems businesses have strengthened since the start of the year and we remain enthused by the opportunities for growth in 2006 and beyond for the business.
After consultation with major shareholders, we have decided to move to twice yearly reporting, an approach consistent with the majority of businesses of our size. However, it is the intention of the Board to provide regular updates to the Market on both trading and opportunities won."