Fidessa Group PLC has released its preliminary results for FY 2017. The numbers are indicative of improved performance for the company during the year.

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Fidessa’s yearly revenue increased by 7% YoY, reaching £353.9 million, relative to 2016’s results of £331.9 million.

When deducting currency exchange rates to gain a more accurate depiction of the company’s performance, the actual change in revenues YoY came in at 3%.

Revenues Breakdown

Of the total £353.9 million in revenues, 66% were accumulated from the company’s activity outside of Europe, showing a well-diversified operational capacity.

Another interesting factor with regard to the revenue total, is the specification that recurring revenue represents 88% of the total revenue amount in 2017.

Additional Data

Fidessa’s adjusted profit before tax improved as well, reaching £54.3 million, up 10% from 2016 levels of £49.5 million. The company’s adjusted profit after tax remained positive, with an 11% appreciation, to reach £40.4 million.

The company’s adjusted diluted EPS posted a similar climb of 11%, with a release at 103.9 pence, up from the preceding year’s mark of 93.7 pence.

While Fidessa’s cash generation in 2017 remained relatively high at £92.4 million, the value was actually 3% lower than 2016 results of £95.2 million.

With regard to company dividends, Fidessa announced that 2017 induced a Final Dividend per share mark of 29.7 pence, for a 5% YoY increase from 28.2 pence.

As the Special Dividend per share remained constant YoY at 50.0 pence, the total value of dividends for 2017 was released at 79.7 pence per share.

Fidessa’s Outlook

Chris Aspinwall, CEO of Fidessa, provided comment on the company’s outlook for the upcoming year and beyond: “2017 has been an important year for the financial markets as they prepared for the new MiFID II regulations which are finally coming into force after many years of discussion and debate. This change is likely to result in a significant transformation to the way in which financial markets operate, with requirements for increased transparency and efficiency creating greater need for automation of global workflow and much tighter integration across a range of technologies.”

MiFID II Impact

As mentioned in Mr. Aspinwall’s comments, MiFID II will continue to make its impact across financial markets. Toward the end of last year, Fidessa reached an agreement with US futures broker RJ O’Brien, to implement the distribution of Fidessa’s futures and options workstation to RJ O‘Brien’s institutional clients.

A similar deal was struck with ABG Sundal Collier, a Norway-based investment bank that caters to institutional clients. ABG Sundal Collier agreed to the terms, with the intention of using Fidessa’s workflow platform to provide clients with the brokerage services in the equities and derivatives markets.

Perhaps more importantly, the deal enabled ABG Sundal Collier to improve its stance of compliance with MiFID II.

In an effort to improve its user interface and experience, Fidessa partnered with ChartIQ in early 2017. The partnership helped to enhance Fidessa’s interface, by providing its clients with charting and customization features, as well as an array of analytics to induce greater and more accurate data for clients.