Fife TV support software firm PayWizard has outlined “great progress” in transforming its business after revealing how better margins helped it improve losses last year.
Chairman Peter Freeman said the company was making big strides as it continued development of a market-leading subscription management platform specially designed for the host of electronic devices now used in the home and on the move.
Documents lodged at Companies House reveal how the Kirkcaldy-based company which counts names like BT Sport, ITV, Racing TV and NBC Universal among its global customer base posted a pre-tax reverse of £1.7 million during the 12 months to December.
But the result was a significant improvement on the previous year’s £2.1m loss, despite turnover tumbling almost 35% to just above £9m.
PayWizard benefited from a 10% improvement in margins, and the £1.3m settlement of a long-term legal battle with HM Customs & Revenue over VAT overpayments.
The group, which employed a monthly average of around 400 people during the year, has retreated from high-volume but low-margin call centre business to focus instead on software development and support.
In his statement accompanying the accounts, Mr Freeman said the strategy was “delivering” with gross margins climbing from 54% during 2012 to 64% last year.
He said changes in the media landscape gave PayWizard a host of opportunities, which had included tie-ups with major tech names like PayPal.
“Our software platform gathers information from all the digital consumer platforms and creates a unified data view,” he said.
“This enables media organisations to create flexible content distribution strategies along with complex pricing models and still retain a single view of consumer activity rather than a device-specific transactional view.
“The software is a market leading product in the media sector and this has allowed us to develop partnerships with global companies so that we can deliver it to the international market.
“In the year we have expanded our partner programme into the payment providers with partnerships with PayPal, WorldPay and Digital River.”
The firm continues to invest heavily as it seeks to exploit a recovering consumer and media market, and increasingly focuses its attention internationally.
“In addition, the economic environment in the UK and Europe has improved in the last 12 months and the media sector continues to outperform the market as a whole, with the result being that we are seeing marked improvements in our key market territories,” addedMr Freeman.
“The structural transformation of the media sector, driven by digital consumer devices, that is creating the challenges of cross-platform monetisation will continue to present opportunities for PayWizard and we are optimistic of continued progress in the year ahead.”
Operations director Jamie Mackinlay said the company had delivered against its budget forecasts during the first half of this year, and was poised to announce significant new contract awards.
He stressed that the firm was taking great strides in its transformation progress which could not be measured within the profit and loss accounts.
“We’ve gone through the very costly process of running down accounts and changing the shape of business, and retooling it to move forward,” he told The Courier.