Beeks confirms ICE Global Network as key customer

Shares of Beeks Financial Cloud Group plc, the Glasgow-based connectivity provider for financial markets, rose about 6% after it confirmed that the first customer for its newly launched Exchange Cloud offering is ICE Global Network (IGN).

IGN is part of ICE Data Services, a division of Intercontinental Exchange, the world’s largest exchange group and owner of the New York Stock Exchange.

The news came in a trading update from Beeks for the year ended June 30, 2022.

“Beeks has delivered a record trading performance in the year, delivering growth on the prior year and in line with upwardly revised market expectations,” said the Glasgow firm.

“The group has exited the year with Annualised Committed Monthly Recurring Revenue of over £19.3m, growth of 40% on the prior year, providing a strong basis for further growth in FY23.

“The group expects to release its audited final results for the 12 months ended 30 June 2022 in early October.”

Beeks Financial Cloud added: “Following the announcement on 13 June 2022 of the launch and first customer for Exchange Cloud, Beeks can now confirm the customer is ICE Global Network.

“ICE Global Network (IGN) has signed a multi-year deal with a period of exclusivity, with the collaboration enabling the customer to provide their client base with compute and analytics, on demand.

Exchange Cloud is a multi-home, fully configured and pre-installed physical trading environment that has been fully optimised for global Exchanges to offer cloud solutions to their end users.

“The successful collaboration between ICE Global Network and Beeks Group’s Exchange Cloud provides a pre-integrated market-leading solution with security at the forefront.

IGN can now deliver additional value to their clients with Beeks Group’s Exchange Cloud infrastructure, compute and analytics offering private cloud services at their NY4 data centre in Secaucus, New Jersey with plans to further expand the service in IGN data centres around the world.”

Margaret Niche, Head of ICE Global Network, said: “ICE Global Network offers global market participants a high-quality, focused service with access to more than 150 liquidity centres.

“Our work with Beeks now gives these participants the ability to combine IGN’s capabilities with Beeks Group’s virtual compute services and analytics.

“It provides market participants with a comprehensive solution that offers the flexibility they need to be agile in an ever-changing trading environment.”

Beeks CEO Gordon McArthur said: “Regulatory compliance concerns continue to be the most significant cloud challenge for the financial services sector.

“We’re delighted to have been working with ICE over the past year to deliver an in-colocation, private cloud deployment for their Capital Markets clients that not only meets those exacting standards, but eliminated some of the risks, making it a lot easier for market participants to add value to their business.

“Beeks technology is a valuable fit for IGN and we look forward to a successful relationship and delivering value via our on demand compute service.

“The success of Proximity Cloud and Exchange Cloud have contributed to a fantastic trading performance in FY22 and we enter the new year with a record sales pipeline and confidence in our ability to continue to capitalise on the significant opportunity ahead.”