Craneware shares soar as revenue rises 16% to $67m

Shares of Edinburgh-based Craneware, a software firm that specializes in the US healthcare market, rose more than 15% on Tuesday after it said its revenue increased 16% to $67.1 million and profit before tax increased 12% to $18.9 million in the year ended June 30, 2018.

In its outlook, Craneware said it has a record sales pipeline for the current financial year.

The firm said it continues “to monitor potential acquisitions” with a “healthy” cash balance and a $50 million funding facility in place.

According to Reuters data, Craneware shares rose 15.4% to 2,643p to give the firm a current stock market value of around £615 million.

Craneware CEO Keith Neilson said: “While the past year has been outstanding in terms of financial results and operational progress, this is by no means the end of the journey and we are excited by the far greater opportunity that lies ahead.

“It is clear that the investments we have made into the organisation’s design, people and products are delivering excellent results, and we will continue to invest in our people and business to ensure we have the capabilities to succeed.

“We believe that the breadth of our customer base and the quantity of data within our solutions means we have the opportunity to sit at the heart of the move to value-based economics; collating and analysing the information that will support hospital-wide decision making and ultimately have a positive impact on the quality of healthcare.   

“With an ongoing, growing market opportunity, a record sales pipeline and increasing long-term revenue visibility, we enter the new financial year with great confidence for the future and the ongoing success of the business.”

Craneware chairman George Elliott said: “It is particularly pleasing to note the continued strong cash conversion of the group, demonstrating the high quality of our earnings.

“The group had cash reserves at the end of the year of $52.8m, a return to the level seen at the end of the previous financial year (FY17: $53.2m), after having returned $23.2m to shareholders via a share buyback and dividends, while also investing a further $4.2m in the Employee Benefit Trust during the year …

“The strong progress within the business can be seen in the successful initial sales of the first Trisus product, which sits upon our newly launched cloud-based platform, the exciting results being delivered by our trial analytics customers and the expansion of our customer base.

“We now supply one or more of our solutions to a third of all US hospitals, with a strong pipeline of additional opportunities.

Alongside technology innovation and organic growth strategies, we continue to monitor potential acquisitions and with our healthy cash balance and a $50m funding facility in place, we have the resources to execute upon our strategic vision should an appropriate acquisition target arise.

“Strict criteria continue to be applied to potential acquisition targets ensuring that they would enhance our hospital footprint, data sets or our product roadmap so that they are quickly accretive to both the financial and operational strength of the group …”