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Aptitude Software Group PLC shares fell on Thursday despite the company releasing an optimistic annual report, expanding its partnership with Microsoft, and announced a buyback programme worth up to £20 million.
Aptitude shares were trading 10% lower at 322.00 pence on Thursday afternoon in London.
The London-based subscription management and finance digitalisation company said pretax profit for 2023 was £5.0 million, up 57% from £3.2 million for 2022. Basic earnings per share jumped 60% to 7.2p from 4.5p.
Revenue remained ‘steady’, rising 0.4% to £74.7 million from £74.4 million.
Annual recurring revenue or ARR rose 2% to £51.1 million from £50.2 million, with Aptitude citing ‘continuing churn in Subscription, Billing and Revenue Management’.
Recurring revenue - which Aptitude called its ‘strategic priority’ - rose 6% to £53.4 million, but non-recurring revenue fell 11% to £21.3 million.
Aptitude’s final dividend was 3.6p per share, unchanged from the previous year and leaving the total payout likewise unchanged at 5.4p.
Over 2024, Aptitude expects to complete an ‘organisational realignment’ to focus on its autonomous finance platform Fynapse, ‘to ensure the business is fully ready to capitalise on the market opportunity’.
It said market trends will moderate this year’s headline revenue and keep profit in line with 2023 figures, ‘before returning to more normalised growth in 2025 and beyond’.
Also on Thursday, Aptitude said it commenced a buyback programme to repurchase up to £20 million in shares over the next three financial years.
The programme is expected to end by the time Aptitude holds its 2025 annual general meeting, and will start with on-market purchases of shares in London for up to £6 million.
Finally, Aptitude announced the expansion of its collaboration with Microsoft Corp cloud-based platform Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance.
Aptitude said in January that it was using the Fynapse platform to integrate its enterprise accounting hub technology to Dynamics 365 Finance.
Building on this, Aptitude said on Thursday that it was ‘investing in enabling a single view of business and finance data with high data processing speeds’. It said this will evolve to better enable companies to automate manual processes, deliver real-time data insights, and increase finance teams’ efficiency.
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