IT systems specialist, Scisys Plc (LON:SSY) , is an AIM listed developer of ICT services, e-Business and advanced technology solutions primarily to the Space, Government, Defence, Environment and Media/Broadcast sectors. Its customers are mostly blue chip companies, government and quasi-government organisations like the European Space Agency, the BBC and the Coal Authority. Headquarted in Wiltshire, the group also has offices in Bochum, Darmstadt and Oberpfaffenhofen in Germany.
Currently trading at 40p per share, Scisys has a market capitalisation of £12m. The company has been something of a recovery story for a while now - the shares were above a pound back in 2007. Perhaps reflecting the mood of pessimism over public sector facing business at a time of austerity measures, though, the shares have traded down in recent months.
Keen to find out more about how the business was holding up, we met recently with the CEO of Mike Love and his Finance Director, Chris Cheetham.
Mike and Chris, thanks for speaking to us today. Mike, can you tell us a bit more about the history of Scisys?
SciSys was set up in 1980 and I’ve been involved with the business since the beginning. We came to the AIM market in 1997. At that point we were called Science Systems. In 2000, we acquired the activities of a financial accounting product, which was called CODA. We acquired the customer base, the IP, quite a lot of staff but not the company. Based around the CODA accounting package, we created a subsidiary, which we called CODA, and changed the name of the plc group to CODASciSys. For four or five years, we were then running as CODASciSys, integrating the CODA product into the activities of our commercial division. We demerged back in 2006, when we basically split CODASciSys into two companies, CODA and SciSys. SciSys is what we’re talking to you about today. CODA was subsequently acquired by Unit4 Agresso. It was purchased for £160m so it was quite a good return, but we had a clear reason to separate the companies. Following the demerger, SciSys then acquired a new company in Germany, VCS, and the past three years has been all about integrating VCS into SciSys and rebuilding the business under the SciSys brand, with SciSys management. We are now a business…
