Escher shares rally on Pos Malaysia contract win
US point-of-sale software specialist Escher Group has won an important new contract, to upgrade IT systems at Post Malaysia’s post offices. The Boston-based company saw it’s share value jump by around 20% last week as the deal was announced, and the company also issued a trading statement suggesting that following the contract win, the board was expecting revenue this year to be “materially ahead of market expectations”.
Escher Group will be providing its Postal Retail System to Pos Malaysia, as part of the postal operator’s Transformation Plan.
The system will make use of Escher’s Riposte software, an end-to-end platform for the delivery of all postal retail services from mailing services, payments, money transfer and banking through to government services.
The core Riposte software connects up different applications operating on various computers within a network, allowing them to communicate with each other. The system can manage data and monitor system status, and allow operation of retail mail and financial services, integrating with utilities and banks as well as government agencies.
A spokesman for Escher said the intention was for the technology to be implemented in all of Pos Malaysia’s post offices.
Escher could not say exactly how many post offices the contract would involve, but Pos Malaysia currently has about 1,028 post offices.
Along with the licensed software and deployment of the solution across the Pos Malaysia network, Escher told Post&Parcel that the deal also included data centre hardware and a two years of maintenance and support.
“Important market”
Liam Church, the Escher Group chief executive, said he was pleased Pos Malaysia had chosen his company to be a “central part” of its Transformation Plan.
“This contract win with Pos Malaysia extends our growing customer base in Asia, demonstrates the strength of our team in this important market and is an endorsement of our vision,” he said, referring to Escher’s vision to be a leading provider of postal platforms.
As Escher Group revealed its contract win, the company’s board issued a statement on the same day stating that it expected sales this year to be ahead of market predictions.
“Further to today’s announcement of the contract win, the board expects revenue for the year ended 31 December 2012 so be materially ahead of market expectations,” said the trading update.
After slowly stagnating since the early summer’s high of GBP 272.5 per share down to a GBP 202.5 level at the start of December, Escher Group’s shares rallied to GBP 242.5 per share immediately following last week’s double announcement.
