Speech recognition specialist Eckoh Plc (LON:ECK) cut its operating loss to £534,000 in the year to the end of March - down from £1.7m last time. Turnover rose to £7.9m - up from £6.7m - and gross profits increased to £5.7m from £4.3m. Adjusted EBITDA of £849,000 compared with a loss of £295,000 in 2009m and there was an adjusted pre-tax profit of £657,000 compared with a loss of £387,000 a year ago. The full year loss of £118,000 is down from £878,000 in 2009. Shares in the group responded by rising 2.6% to 4.8p in early trading.
Eckoh specialises in developing speech recognition solutions for customer contact centres and is the largest provider of such hosted services in the UK. Its sophisticated technology enables routine enquiries, transactions or payments to be processed without the need for the consumer to speak with a contact centre agent. This significantly reduces the client's operational costs, whilst freeing up the agents to deal with more complex and high-value enquiries.
At the end of May Eckoh announced that its Client IVR division had merged with Telecom Express Ltd in return for a 27.5% stake in the new business. The move was designed to enable Eckoh to focus on its speech solutions business. The division experienced a continuing difficult period with revenues falling by 29% to £8.8m for the year and margin declining by 35% to £1.2m. As a result, the profit contribution fell to £0.05m compared with £0.7m for the previous year.
Chief executive Nik Philpot said: "Despite the backdrop of continuing economic uncertainty, Eckoh has been able to build on the good progress we made last year and deliver an excellent set of results. It is clear from the strong growth achieved that there is a tremendous opportunity to drive significant profits and value for shareholders in the speech sector going forward. The agreement to merge the Client IVR business is the final step in making Eckoh a pure speech solutions company, and we can now focus all our energies on continuing this growth and maximising our market leading position."
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