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/

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.