Wednesday 14 May 2008

Invu revenues soar

Invu was founded in 1997 and listed on AIM in 2004. It provides electronic document management systems to SMEs.

Invu came to may attention many years ago because its Non-exec Chairman is Daniel Goldman – the son of David Goldman; the founder of Sage. Being an (very) SME myself, I’ve always found document management a real trial. Indeed, I’ve now got to the point where if I can’t find it on my computer – I give up. Now that’s something which can be frustrating at best, downright dangerous at worse. The problem is that anything sent to me in any form other than an email never gets onto my computer. Invu’s systems solve all that and allow SMEs to provide fully indexed and therefore ‘findable’ electronic documents from whatever original source (faxes, technical drawings, legal documents, signed contracts, letters etc.) That’s why I have always thought they were onto a winner.

Revenues for the year to 31st Jan 08 were ahead of expectations; up 38% at £8.71m. Typically “Sage-like”, InvuCare revenues are now £1.47m with 77% renewal rates from the 3700 customers and 72,000 users that Invu has amassed.

However, PBT fell from £1.82m to £1.72m – largely as a result of a £1m “one-off restructuring costs related to the corporate restructuring”.

Invu also announced a number of new senior joiners – CTO, Head of OEM Sales and Marketing, Director of Marketing. So it’s starting to look like a real grownup company now.

Invu shares were down 1% yesterday at 31.6p valuing the company at £35.5m. This is pretty much the same level as the 30p fund raising a year back and not far from the all-time high of 34.5p. Investors who came in at the 8.5p Jan 2004 IPO can’t really complain!

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