Blue Prism Group PLC Post year-end trading update (6302P)

TIDMPRSM

RNS Number : 6302P

Blue Prism Group PLC

21 November 2016

21 November 2016

Blue Prism Group plc

("Blue Prism" or the "Group")

Post year-end trading update

Blue Prism (AIM: PRSM), a global leader in Robotic Process Automation ("RPA"), provides an update on trading for the year ended 31 October 2016.

The Board is pleased to report that momentum has continued in the final quarter of the financial year. As such, the Board expects to report trading for the year ended 31 October 2016 comfortably ahead of its existing expectations, upgraded at the time of the interim results announcement on 28 June 2016 and again at the time of the trading update on 5 August 2016.

This positive performance was principally driven by:

   -      Strong new business wins in Q4 2016 

- 39 new customers won in Q4 2016, taking our total customer base to 153 (FY 2015: 57 customers)

- Significant upsells from existing customers demonstrating their increasing RPA adoption and validating the Group's 'land and expand' strategy

   -      Channel partner ecosystem continuing to gain traction 
   -      Continued investment in growing our US sales team and wider sales and marketing investments 
   -      Bringing forward investments previously scheduled for 2017 into the second half of 2016 

The RPA market continues to demonstrate encouraging signs of rapid growth and the Board has therefore decided to continue its investment in sales and marketing into the financial year ending 31 October 2017. These investments continue to be undertaken against the Group's strong trading performance for the year ended 31 October 2016, combined with the comfort of a solid balance sheet with net cash for the year of approximately GBP11.8 million and supported by an inherent cash generative model.

Alastair Bathgate, CEO of Blue Prism, commented:

"We are delighted with the Company's continuing momentum, which resulted in us delivering a record quarter at the end of our 2016 financial year. This performance reflects the growing market awareness of the benefits of robotic process automation as well as the success of our strategy to accelerate investment to secure future growth. Our channel partners continue to gain traction and with a strong pipeline we look forward to 2017 with confidence."

For further information please contact:

 
 Blue Prism Group plc             via Newgate Communications 
  Jason Kingdon, Chairman 
  Alastair Bathgate, Chief 
  Executive Officer 
  Gary Johnson, Chief Financial 
  Officer 
 Investec Bank plc                Tel: [phone] 
  Andrew Pinder / Sebastian 
  Lawrence 
  Carlton Nelson / Dominic 
  Emery 
 Newgate Communications           Tel: [phone] 
  Bob Huxford / Adam Lloyd 
  / Helena Bogle 
 

About Blue Prism

Blue Prism is a UK-based software company and a leader in the emerging global technology category of Robotic Process Automation. The Group supplies software robots that automate clerical back office processes and operate in similar fashion to humans, by autonomously logging on and orchestrating various systems. Blue Prism's Software Robots are differentiated in the market as they have been designed to be deployed at scale in enterprise-sized organisations where security, resilience, robustness, flexibility, scalability and compliance can be critical.

Blue Prism's Software Robots provide a Virtual Workforce that is operated by the business function while being supported by the IT function. As such, software robots can address the "long tail" of automation that is currently not able to be addressed by the IT function due to limited economic granularity and resources.

The Group spent several years "industrialising" the software with a number of its blue-chip customers, including Barclays Bank, Co-operative Banking Group, Telefónica O2, RWE npower and Shop Direct. This enabled Blue Prism to meet the product and methodology standards needed to deploy this new robotic workforce in a transformational way, much like BPO did to business back offices 20 years ago. For this reason, Blue Prism's customers see the robots as a third sourcing option to complement onshore and offshore human resources.

The Group is increasingly focused on establishing its global Channel Partner ecosystem which currently includes Accenture, Deloitte, Cap Gemini, IBM, id. Management, NEOOPS and Thoughtonomy.

As at 31 October 2016 Blue Prism had 86 employees based out of offices in Newton-le-Willows and London (UK) and Miami, Chicago, New York and San Francisco (US).

This information is provided by RNS

The company news service from the London Stock Exchange

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November 21, 2016 02:00 ET (07:00 GMT)