Galway-based Graham Tech reports €5.1m profits


4 Aug 2004

Galway-based Graham Technology has reported operating profits of €5.1m for the last 12 months, a 130pc increase on last year’s results of €2.1m. Overall turnover at the company, which also has operations in the UK, increased by 44pc to €23m, up from €16m last year.

Graham says it has taken on no external funding and its growth has been purely organic. The company identifies and solves a diverse range of business problems that affect the way in which organisations communicate and serve current and prospective customers, using its core software technology GT-X to tackle business process management issues.

The company contrasted its performance to larger rivals like Siebel, which has failed to hit targets for 12 quarters in succession, and Chordiant, which has lost a third off the value of its share price.

Graham’s chief financial officer Kenny Bain commented: “Our revenue, profits and cash all reached record levels in what is a challenging time in the IT sector. We are continuing to sign business with new customers and also for new products within our existing customer base. Significant license sales have been achieved in the year to large blue chip organisations in Ireland, the UK, Australia, Indonesia and South Africa.

“We expect this growth to continue, and will be recruiting more software engineers and business development personnel to meet the increase in demand. As part of our strategic global expansion within the US and Asia Pacific, we opened new offices in Boston, Jakarta, Hong Kong and Auckland. In parallel, we have added further new offices in Paris and Eindhoven to penetrate the Central European market.”

Managing director Mairi McLellan added: “Graham Technology has done exceptionally well this year in a time when we were investing in new geographies and heavily recruiting in the middle of a market downturn. Our challenge as we move forward is to ensure we maintain our quality and unique culture as the company continues to grow at a rapid rate.

“The continued investment into R&D is ensuring we, and our customers, maintain our competitive edge. We also have specialist blue-sky teams working on highly innovative areas. With an ongoing 100pc success rate for GT-X implementations, we have an unparalleled reputation against our competition and stand in sharp contrast to industry failure rates,” McLellan said.

By John Kennedy