AGM Statement - Sopheon

At the Annual General Meeting of Sopheon plc to be held later today, the chairman of the board will give shareholders an update and review of the business. This will include the following statement:

“We were delighted to report strong growth in 2012 with revenues up by 23% to £12.7m, as well as improvement in profits, with EBITDA growing to £1.8m from £1.5m and profit before tax growing to £281,000 from £104,000. We also strengthened the Group’s working capital position by extending the maturity and level of our convertible debt, having paid down the majority of our term loan with BlueCrest Capital. In addition, we shifted our Amsterdam listing from Euronext to Alternext, an exciting market that is a better match for our corporate profile.

At the end of 2011 we noted that our strong client base was absorbing much attention from our sales team, resulting in less focus on generating new accounts. We therefore reorganized to drive more balanced attention to both new account acquisition and generating additional growth out of our client base, and this was reflected in a much better performance from new accounts last year. This improvement was underpinned by a major contribution from customers headquartered in new territories such as China and the Middle East. We also saw early fruits of our shift to an agile development methodology with a number of customer-focused releases, culminating in the landmark release of Accolade 8.2 at the start of 2013.

On the back of the operating and corporate improvements described above, we ended last year with the confidence to expand headcount in targeted areas of the business, and we have kept shareholders updated on our recruitment activities over recent months. These resources are driving accelerated initiatives for expanded regional sales and marketing, digital marketing programs and product development releases, as well as supplementing our services capacity. This has been achieved through a mix of new hires and fairly extensive subcontracting activity, in part to provide specific skill-sets not yet available from our in house resources. Full year 2013 revenue visibility from contracted business and recurring revenue streams has now risen above £8m, compared to £7.5m at the time of our AGM statement a year ago. This improvement, much of which is represented by services, is encouraging. However, our cost expansion is being undertaken in conjunction with higher internal revenue goals. We are currently working to close a considerable amount of license business, some of which is needed in June to enable first half revenues to exceed the comparable 2012 result.

Over the past year we have advised shareholders of our plans to undertake a capital reorganization to consolidate the number of shares and shareholders, and to reduce the accumulated deficit on the profit and loss account. These proposals were formalized and notified to shareholders in a circular dated 1 May, which is available on the Company’s website. The proposals will be put to shareholders in a general meeting of the Company, to be held immediately after today’s Annual General Meeting.”