June 2009 - OpRisk & Compliance (article)

Budgets are under pressure, and more and more firms are opting for a single platform provider for all their compliance software needs. Victorial Pennington (editor) looks at which companies they are turning to, and why.

Click here to read this article by OpRisk & Compliance

Sunday, June 14, 2009  - Sunday Business Post By Gavin Daly

Like many people, Paul Kerley never expected banks to go bust. Unlike most people, however, Kerley sells software to banks. So when the financial world ‘‘froze’’ last year, he knew it was only a matter of time before company, Norkom, felt the effects. It did: €5 million in revenues ‘‘fell out of the bucket’’ when Washington Mutual got into difficulty and was taken over by JP Morgan Chase.

‘‘We didn’t plan on banks going out of business. There is no button in Excel for that,” said Kerley, pointing out that a €5million hit would be enough to wipe out many companies, particularly software firms. The turmoil in the world’s major currencies also knocked a sizeable percentage off the company’s revenues and profits.

As it was, Norkom last week reported revenues of €48 million for the financial year to the end of March, up 17 per cent from the previous year.

Pre-tax profits rose marginally to just over €4.9 million, and the improved finances sent Norkom’ s shares up 33 per cent to €1.17 late last week.

By John Mulligan, Irish Independent
Wednesday June 10 2009

Norkom chief executive Paul Kerley expects a "shakeout" in the financial software sector in the next year and said the company's €27m cash pile could be used to fund acquisitions in North America and Asia.

Speaking as the Irish fraud prevention and financial compliance software firm posted a 17pc rise in revenue to €48m in the year to the end of March, Mr Kerley added that the company is hoping to see a return to organic growth rates of around 25pc by 2012.

By Geoff Percival - Irish Examiner

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

A STRONG performance from its operations in the Asia-Pacific region helped Norkom Technologies – the Dublin-headquartered specialist international software provider – increase profits and revenue in its latest financial year.

For the 12 months to the end of March, Norkom saw pre-tax profits increase slightly from €4.88 million to just over €4.9m. Operating profit went from €4.5m to just under €4.8m, but basic earnings per share fell from 6.94c to 4.5c.

Overall revenues grew by 17% from a little over €41m to just over €48m.