Eckoh is the UK's leading provider of multi-channel customer service and secure payment solutions.

Our customer self-service solutions enable enquiries or secure payment transactions to be made without the need to talk to a contact centre agent. This reduces operational costs and enables your agents to focus on more complex enquiries.

Enhancing the customer experience with self-service solutions:
•Intelligent call routing
•Secure PCI DSS compliant card payments
•Customer identification and verification
•Real-time information
•Data capture
•Customer surveys
•Product purchase
•Balance enquiries, subscriptions and renewals
•Delivery tracking
•Ticket booking
•Outbound notifications

ECKOH PLC MEETINGS

Eckoh plc regularly holds meetings with its major institutional investors where general presentations are given covering the interim and preliminary results. All Directors have access to the Company's nominated advisers who give feedback from shareholders and receive copies of broker update documents.

In addition to regular financial reporting, significant matters relating to the trading or development of the business are disseminated to the market by way of Stock Exchange announcements. Eckoh plc is listed on the Alternative Investment Market (“AIM”) under the ticker symbol "ECK". The RNS announcements released by the Company to the Stock Exchange are provided.


http://www.eckoh.com/

Full year results for the year ended 31 March 2015
RNS
RNS Number : 1838R
Eckoh PLC
25 June 2015

25 June 2015





Eckoh plc

("Eckoh" or "the Company" or "the Group")



Full year results for the year ended 31 March 2015



Second successive year of double-digit growth achieved



Eckoh (AIM: ECK), a global provider of secure payment products and customer service solutions, is pleased to announce its final results for the year ended 31 March 2015.



The Company has also announced separately today that it is in advanced discussions regarding the possible acquisition by Eckoh of the entire ordinary share capital of Netcall plc ("Netcall"), a leading customer engagement software provider, on a recommended basis.





Financial Highlights:

· Revenue up 22% to £17.2m (FY14: £14.0m) including recurring revenues of 76%

· Gross profit increased 28% to £13.1m (FY14: £10.2m)

· Adjusted* operating profit increased by 54% to £3.4m (FY14: £2.2m)

· Adjusted** EBITDA increased 40% to £4.5m (FY14: £3.2m)

· Profit before Tax increased from a loss of £1.4m to a profit of £2.1m

· Basic EPS increased to 0.96p (FY14: 0.14p)

· The Board recommends a 18% increase in full year dividend to 0.37 pence per share for the year ended 31 March 2015 (FY14: 0.3125 pence per share)





Operational Highlights:

· Record number of new UK clients, 19, largely from retail, leisure and financial services, contracted during the financial year;

· US subsidiary, Eckoh Inc, secured five customers in its first financial year and the US team now enlarged to six employees

· 100% renewal of all significant customer contracts falling due within the period



Current Trading:

· Announced advanced discussions regarding the possible recommended acquisition of Netcall

· New enhanced five-year framework agreement concluded with Capita Customer Management ("Capita"), announced separately today

· New five-year Capita contract for leading UK transportation organisation

· Largest margin client renewed for two years

· Haloh voice and web solution (originally OneProx) has now been brought to market

· Encouraging sales pipeline in both the UK and US





*Adjusted Operating Profit is Operating Profit excluding expenses relating to share option schemes, legal fees and settlement costs and expenses relating to acquisitions

**Adjusted EBITDA is the profit before tax adjusted for depreciation, amortisation, finance income, finance expense and expenses relating to share option schemes, legal fees and settlement costs and amortisation and expenses relating to acquisitions



The Company's Annual Report and Accounts for the year ended 31 March 2015 will be published today on the Company's website, www.eckoh.com, and will shortly be posted, along with a Notice of AGM, to those shareholders who have requested hard copies.



Nik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer, commented today:



"As our full year results demonstrate, Eckoh has continued to achieve excellent growth over the last 12 months, delivering a second successive year of double-digit revenue and margin growth. The record number of clients secured and our high customer retention rates are testament to the strength of our offering in secure payments and customer services, creating a robust revenue platform on which we can continue to build.



We are also excited to be announcing today the possible recommended offer for Netcall, which would further enhance our prospects. The Directors of Eckoh and Netcall believe that the acquisition would represent a highly complementary fit for both businesses, offering strategic and financial synergies, and Eckoh expects the acquisition to be earnings enhancing*.



We have also started the new financial year very positively with the new enhanced framework agreement with Capita, which will deepen our channel partner engagement, and we have a strong new business pipeline in the USA and UK. Therefore the Board remains very confident of delivering continued growth going forward."

Netcall notes possible recommended offer from Eckoh
StockMarketWire.com
Netcall said it is in advanced talks regarding a possible acquisition by Eckoh of its entire issued and to be issued shares on a recommended basis. Netcall shareholders would be payable with 1.25 Eckoh shares and 13p cash for each share

This would imply a value of about 63.94p for each Netcall share based on the closing mid-market share price per Eckoh share of 40.75p on 24 June 2015.

Eckoh reserves the right to introduce other forms of consideration and/or vary the proposed mix of consideration in any offer.

It is the belief of the directors of Netcall and Eckoh that the Acquisition would represent a highly complementary fit for both businesses, offering strategic and financial synergies.

Significant cost savings are anticipated to be available to the combined business from the elimination of duplicate board and public listing costs and the directors of Eckoh expect the acquisition to be earnings enhancing.

This statement does not constitute a profit forecast nor should it be interpreted to mean that the future earnings per Ordinary Share of Eckoh will necessarily match or exceed historical earnings per Ordinary Share.

There can be no certainty that any offer will ultimately be made for Netcall.

New Capita Framework Agreement & Contract Win
RNS
RNS Number : 1510R
Eckoh PLC
25 June 2015



For immediate release
25 June 2015






Eckoh PLC ("Eckoh")

New Five-Year Framework Agreement with Capita and New Contract Win

Eckoh signs significant new five-year contract with Capita to service leading transport organisation

Eckoh plc (AIM:ECK), the global provider of secure payment products and customer service solutions, today announces that it has entered into a new five-year framework agreement with Capita Customer Management ("Capita") and secured through the agreement a significant five-year contract to provide telephony services to a leading UK transport organisation.

The partnership between Capita and Eckoh was first announced on 8 April 2013 when the original three-year framework agreement was put in place. The new five-year agreement comes as a result of a successful period of collaboration in which a number of large contracts have been secured.

The new contract also announced today will see Capita and Eckoh collaborate on a customer in the UK transportation sector to deliver a number of Eckoh services including EckohROUTE, EckohID and EckohPAY, a Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards ("PCI DSS") compliant secure automated payment solution integrated to Capita's own PCI compliant payment processing solution for card authorisation and settlement.

The partnership will enable drivers to pay a variety of vehicle charges over the phone without needing to speak to a contact centre agent, thus freeing up the agents to focus on more complex enquiries. Callers will be identified by their vehicle registration number, make and model, which they will provide using Eckoh's advanced speech recognition technology.

This contract represents a further success for Eckoh's channel partner strategy, delivering Eckoh's third significant contract via Capita.

Nik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer at Eckoh, commented:

"We are delighted to be renewing our framework agreement with Capita on a longer basis, which recognises the success we have had working together in the first two years of our partnership. This success is illustrated by the new contract that we have announced today where we will be deploying a number of Eckoh products including our market leading secure payment solution EckohPAY. Today's announcement reinforces our market-leading position in delivering both advanced speech recognition applications and secure payment solutions as well as demonstrating the value of and opportunity for our channel partner relationships."

-- Ends -

International Secure Payment Contract Wins
RNS
RNS Number : 1844W
Eckoh PLC
17 August 2015



For immediate release
17 August 2015




Eckoh PLC

("Eckoh" or "the Group")

International Secure Payment Contract Wins

Eckoh (AIM:ECK), the global provider of secure payment products and customer service solutions, is pleased to announce today a number of new contract wins for its secure payments products signed since the start of the new financial year. In particular, Eckoh has won a number of new direct contracts across international markets, complementing ongoing progress in the UK.



These international contracts have been signed respectively with a leading airline operator in South Africa, a large consultancy organisation in Morocco and a public sector organisation in Canada. The fourth and most recent contract was an agreement secured directly with a utility provider in the United States through Eckoh's US subsidiary, Eckoh Inc. This is the seventh contract won directly through Eckoh Inc since June 2014.



The contracts are all for Eckoh's patented CallGuard solution which is deployed directly into the customer's contact centres. A key benefit of this CallGuard solution is that it can be deployed and operational extremely quickly, often in weeks, ensuring that specific compliance or fraud concerns the client may have can be addressed in a timeframe that no other solutions can match.



In addition, in the UK, Eckoh has won its first new contract for the Haloh Audio Tokenisation secure payment solution, that automatically replaces sensitive card data with a non-sensitive equivalent or 'token' when a payment takes place, enabling organisations to store and use the data without the security risk. This new solution was launched in May this year at the Card-Not-Present Expo in Florida. The new contract is with Sensée, an outsourcer specialising in homeworkers, who are an existing CallGuard client and the new contract is to implement the Audio Tokenisation solution on behalf of a new customer of Sensée's.



The Directors believe that these wins further demonstrate the strong and growing global demand for Eckoh's PCI DSS compliant payment solutions and the variety of secure phone payment solutions which Eckoh offers. The new contracts will start to generate revenue in the current financial year, supporting current growth expectations, and help to underpin the Group's growing sector dominance and international presence.



Nik Philpot, CEO at Eckoh, commented:



"We have had an encouraging start to the year particularly for our secure payments products and it is gratifying to see the acceleration in our international sales as Eckoh's reputation and the quality of our product offering becomes more widely known. Momentum for our solutions continues to build, with the sales pipelines for both our direct and indirect sales in our UK and US core markets remaining at an excellent level and positioning us strongly for further growth.



It is also particularly pleasing to sign our first new contract for our new Audio Tokenisation secure payment product. This new service offering has been received very favourably by the market since its launch and for organisations wishing to prevent all sensitive card data entering their internal environment with minimal integration effort and expenditure; we believe that this is a hugely compelling proposition."



-- Ends -

Notification of Interim Results
RNS
RNS Number : 5200E
Eckoh PLC
04 November 2015

For Immediate Release
4 November 2015






Eckoh PLC



("Eckoh" or "the Group")



Notification of Interim Results



Eckoh, the global provider of secure payment products and customer service solutions, will announce the Company's Interim Results for the six months ended 30 September 2015 on Wednesday 18 November 2015.

Secure Payments Contract Win
RNS
RNS Number : 2654F
Eckoh PLC
11 November 2015

PRESS RELEASE

11 November 2015

Eckoh plc

Three-Year Secure Payments Contract Win
with Global Multi-Media Retailer


Eckoh plc ("Eckoh", AIM: ECK), the global provider of secure payment solutions and multi-channel customer service, announces that it has secured a significant new three-year contract to provide secure payment services to one of the world's largest multi-media retailers (the "Client"), broadcasting to over 200 million homes worldwide.

The retailer will be using the recently launched tokenisation variant of Eckoh's CallGuard solution, from the Haloh suite of secure payments solutions. By converting sensitive card data into tokenised, non-sensitive data that is useless to hackers and criminals if intercepted, Haloh enables organisations to process the tokenised data without security risk. The key feature that attracted the new Client to this solution is that it is easily implemented, requiring no integration or change to its current IT infrastructure, and can be used to process secure data from any communication channel.

Haloh enables organisations to uphold their security commitment to protect and keep private their customers' personal information. It also means businesses can focus on their core operational objectives and quickly satisfy a significant part of the latest PCI DSS compliance process. The solution is expected to go fully live in Spring 2016, initially in the UK market.

Nik Philpot, CEO of Eckoh, commented:

"I am delighted to announce this major new contract for our Haloh payment solution. Our payment clients' key goal is to protect their customer data without compromising customer experience. With recent high-profile data breaches highlighting the significant risks organisations take if they do not secure data effectively, we would expect to see demand for our technology only increase. To this end, we continue to evolve our products by developing the latest security systems and to make them flexible enough to accommodate the most challenging IT environments. Our latest tokenisation solution meets these needs exactly and we are excited that this household brand is the latest company to adopt it."

- Ends -

Shares - The price is too high to warrant buying the shares.

MEET THE TECH SUPERSTARS OF TOMORROW

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Eckoh wins five-year contract with CHOA

StockMarketWire.com

Eckoh's US subsidiary has won a five-year contract to provide secure payment services to Children's Healthcare of Atlanta.

Eckoh will provide CHOA with the CallGuard solution, from the Haloh Secure Payments Suite. This particular variation of CallGuard uses Eckoh's recently UK patented (US patent pending) tokenisation technology, which was launched to the market in May 2015.



At 8:15am: (LON:ECK) Eckoh PLC share price was +1p at 46p

Two Significant US Contracts

RNS


RNS Number : 9683Z

Eckoh PLC

02 June 2016








2nd June 2016




Eckoh plc

("Eckoh" or "the Company" or "the Group")



Eckoh Announces Two Significant US Contracts Worth $7m over Three Years



Eckoh plc (AIM: ECK), the global provider of secure payment products and customer contact solutions, today announces that its wholly owned subsidiary, Eckoh US, has signed two significant contracts, worth an estimated $7m in aggregate over their three-year terms.

The first contract has been secured through our US reseller partner and is a new three-year agreement for Eckoh to provide secure payment services to a global insurance company in the Fortune 500. The contract, which represents the second major US organisation secured through our partner in 2016, will see Eckoh provide its patented CallGuard tokenisation solution across 5,000 US-based contact centre agents employed by the corporation. The delivered solution, which is expected to be operational by the last quarter of the financial year, has a minimum value to Eckoh of $2m evenly spread across the three-year term. In line with the focus of our partnership on large enterprise customers, typically targeting the Fortune 500, this contract is the largest secure payments deal won in the US since Eckoh entered the market two years ago. It is further indication that momentum is not only building in terms of contract wins but also in value.

The second contract, which has been won by the Group directly, is a three-year agreement to provide a variety of contact centre infrastructure support services to a major US telecommunications company, commencing from July 2016. The contract will generate a minimum of $3m revenue over the three-year term but with anticipated revenue in excess of $5m.

This contract is underpinned by the services and capabilities secured through our acquisition of Product Support Solutions Inc ("PSS") in November 2015. Whilst one of the key rationales for acquiring PSS was to support the anticipated growth of the Secure Payments business in the US, its established and profitable contact centre services business has since enabled us to create a sustainable US Customer Contact Solutions operation alongside that of Secure Payments. This win is clear assurance that there are both substantial and strongly profitable contracts to be won that will assist in the scaling of the overall US operation.

Nik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer at Eckoh, commented:

"We are delighted to be announcing these two major US contracts simultaneously. They clearly illustrate the excellent progress we are making in driving forward our US operation since the acquisition of PSS last November.

We are now trading as a unified entity in the US, which is comprised of the business lines Secure Payments and Customer Contact Solutions mirroring that in the UK, and it is satisfying to see such substantial deals being won from both sides of the operation. The integration of PSS is nearing completion and these sizeable contracts demonstrate that the business rationale for being part of Eckoh is yielding returns at every level. We expect the substantial progress and growth achieved by the Group since the acquisition to continue throughout the remainder of the current financial year and beyond."

Updated Agreement with West Corporation

RNS


RNS Number : 9682Z

Eckoh PLC

02 June 2016




For Immediate Release 2nd June 2016







Eckoh PLC

("Eckoh" or "the Company" or "the Group")



Updated Distributor Agreement with West Corporation

Eckoh (AIM: ECK), the global provider of secure payment products and customer contact solutions, today announces that it has entered into an updated three-year US distributor agreement with West Corporation ("West"). Over the first two years of the partnership, commencement of which was announced on 1 July 2014, West and Eckoh have successfully built a significant sales pipeline for Eckoh's secure payments solution targeted for US Fortune 500 organisations.

The new and updated distributor agreement will see West continue to focus on delivering additional enterprise deals over the next three years on a non-exclusive basis, enabling Eckoh to extend its presence and partnerships in the US mid-market where the Group has witnessed the majority of its direct sales success.

The partnership will be focused on promoting the tokenisation variant of CallGuard, which eliminates sensitive credit card data from the contact centre environment without the need for any changes to the client's existing IT infrastructure. It will eradicate the potential for card data theft by ensuring that employees are not exposed to card data, as well as completely removing the agents, call recordings, telephony, systems and processes from the audit scope of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards ("PCI DSS").

Nik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer of Eckoh, commented:

"We are delighted to have updated our contract with West, which underlines the progress we have made successfully working together in the first two years of our partnership, building a very significant pipeline in the US market. This success is perfectly illustrated by a new and sizeable contract that we have also announced today, where we will be deploying from our Haloh product suite our tokenisation secure payments solution, which is an extremely compelling solution for large organisations with complex IT environments.

Today's announcement reinforces our market leading position in the US for delivering robust and proven secure payment solutions; as well as demonstrating our ability to accelerate the growth of our business through successful channel partner relationships."

- Ends -

Full year results for the year ended 31 March 2016

RNS


RNS Number : 0716B

Eckoh PLC

14 June 2016







14 June 2016






Eckoh plc

("Eckoh" or "the Company" or "the Group")



Full year results for the year ended 31 March 2016



Significant US progress supports third year of double digit revenue and margin growth



Eckoh plc (AIM: ECK), the global provider of secure payment products and customer contact solutions, is pleased to announce its final results for the year ended 31 March 2016.



Financial Highlights:

· Revenue increased 31% to £22.5m (2014/5 £17.2m)

o Revenue from the US increased from £0.2m to £4.0m

· UK Recurring revenue now 79% of total revenue (2014/5: 76%)

· Gross profit increased 29% to £16.8m (2014/5: £13.1m)

· Adjusted* operating profit increased 22% to £4.1m (2014/5: £3.4m)

· Adjusted** EBITDA increased 20% to £5.4m (2014/5: £4.5m)

· Profit from operating activities of £2.5m (2014/5: £0.9m loss***)

· The Board is recommending a 20% increase in full year dividend to 0.45 pence per share (FY15: 0.375 pence per share)



Operational Highlights:

· Completed the acquisition of Product Support Solutions, Inc ("PSS") in November 2015 to further establish presence in US and support future growth

· Nine contracts won in US Secure Payments operation (FY15: four) including the first West contract

· Thirteen new UK contracts secured including Thames Water, the Co-operative Group, Ecotricity and a global on-line retailer

· Two largest UK clients renewed for a minimum of four years and all other significant clients renewed

· Patents awarded for new tokenisation payments solution Haloh in the UK and core Secure Payments solution CallGuard in the US



Current Trading:

· US distributor agreement with West updated for three-year period

· Three-year US secure payments contract worth $2m won with global insurance company via West

· Three-year contract worth an estimated $5m won with US telecommunications provider



*excludes expenses relating to share option schemes, acquired intangible amortisation and expenses relating to acquisitions

** EBITDA is the profit before tax adjusted for depreciation, amortisation, finance income, finance expense, and expenses relating to share option schemes and acquisitions

*** Restated as set out in note 1



Nik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer, commented today:



"For the third successive year Eckoh is delighted to report double digit revenue and margin growth, reflecting in particular a year of tremendous progress in the US market. Not only have we seen the first major contracts coming through from our partnership with West but the acquisition of PSS in November 2015 has really accelerated our growth.



The addition of PSS has meant that we now are able to offer both Secure Payments and Customer Contact solutions in the US as we do in the UK. The benefit of having an end-to-end and comprehensive solution set that allows us to both support and advise organisations as they transition and secure their contact centre infrastructure has been self-evident in the progress we have made in recent months, including winning significant contracts in both product areas in each of our key markets.



The contracts secured recently, which will deliver significant benefit once live in the second half of the new financial year, give us the confidence that the strong growth we have consistently delivered in the past few years will continue. The Board remains excited by the prospects for the Company and continues to evaluate opportunities for scaling the business even further alongside our organic growth."

Dividend Declaration

RNS


RNS Number : 1667B

Eckoh PLC

14 June 2016







For immediate release

14 June 2016




Eckoh plc

Dividend Declaration



Eckoh plc (AIM: ECK), the global provider of secure payment products and customer contact solutions, announces that the Directors are recommending that a final dividend for the year ended 31 March 2016 of 0.45 pence per ordinary share be paid to the shareholders whose names appear on the register at the close of business on 7 October 2016 with payment on 4 November 2016. The ex-dividend date will be 6 October 2016. This recommendation will be put to the shareholders at the Annual General Meeting.

Based on the shares in issue at the year end, this payment would amount to £1.1m.

Trading Update

RNS


RNS Number : 7645I

Eckoh PLC

02 September 2016







2 September 2016












Eckoh plc

("Eckoh" or the "Company")



Trading Update



Eckoh (AIM: ECK), the global provider of secure payment products and customer contact solutions, announces a trading update in connection with its US business and its faster than expected transition towards a pure Software-as-a-Service ("SaaS") pricing model.

To increase the Company's proportion of recurring revenues in the US and to bring it in-line with the recurring revenue model in the UK business, Eckoh is in the process of transitioning its new Secure Payments customers to a SaaS pricing model rather than the historical model of upfront pricing followed by a fixed maintenance and support charge. In the last two years, over 90 percent of contracts in the US Secure Payments market have been sold using upfront pricing, largely due to the fact that hardware-based solutions implemented on the customer's premises has formed the basis for all implementations. Recognising the benefits to the Company of improved recurring revenues and the attraction of a SaaS model to our customers, the Company has been working to transition more of its new US business into this model.

The newly introduced SaaS model offers Eckoh greater revenue visibility, longer-term client relationships (typically of three to five year fixed terms) and higher overall gross margins. Eckoh's US customers have proved extremely receptive to this approach and the transition is taking place much more quickly than expected, with over 80 percent of the Company's US sales pipeline already using this pricing structure. The speed of this transition is expected to reduce the forecast margin from US Secure Payments in the short and medium term but to increase it in the longer term.

In November 2015, Eckoh acquired the US business Product Support Solutions ("PSS"), predominantly in order to support Eckoh's continued expansion of its Secure Payments products in the US, where PSS has a significant presence. As detailed in the announcement at the time of the acquisition, PSS has a non-core US division, which carries out one-off professional service projects typically with no ongoing revenue. In the current financial year there have been cost over-runs on a large and complex fixed-price project undertaken by the division, which is expected to lead to overall losses for the division of £600,000 in the six months to 30 September 2016 and will have an expected total cost for the full year of £700,000. As a consequence, the decision has been taken to accelerate the closure of the division and focus the Company's US workforce on its continuing core operations.

As a result of the transition to SaaS pricing and the cost over-runs at PSS's professional services division outlined above, it is expected that the Company's pre-tax profits for the year to 31 March 2017 will be below market expectations and is expected to be in line with the performance last year, after absorbing the costs of the discontinued division. The medium and longer term outlook for the Company remains positive, with the transition to a recurring revenue model and decisive action at the PSS professional services division resulting in an improvement in the certainty and the quality of its earnings.