SmartPay posts 1st-half profit after buying assets

SmartPay posts 1st-half profit after buying assets from ProvencoCadmus carcass

Nov 27. (BusinessWire) –SmartPay Ltd., whose shares have jumped 340% in the past six months, turned to a first-half profit after finalizing the acquisition of ProvencoCadmus. This included six weeks trading from the assets purchased from receivers.

Net profit after tax was $353,000 in the six months ended Sept. 30, turning around from a $2.7million loss on the previous period in 2008, New Zealand’s biggest provider of electronic funds transfer technology said in a statement today. Operating revenue rose 1.3% to $17.9 million. No dividend is being paid.

Shares in Smartpay last traded at 4 cents on the NZX today, giving the company a market value of $32.7 million.

SmartPay, which appointed former head of Cadmus Technology Ian Bailey as its new managing director in August 2008, bought the payments division of ProvencoCadmus from the receivers in late August of this year. Bailey has returned to the offices he formerly occupied as managing director of Cadmus.

The ProvencoCadmus acquisition fitted neatly into SmartPay’s growth strategy which has already seen the purchase of companies including All Talk Communications, Merchant IP Services and Wi-Fi provider FIVO, Bailey said.

The company’s product range includes EFTPOS terminal and related services, in-store services such as Wi-Fi, radio, music and advertising.

Provenco, one New Zealand’s largest providers of EFTPOS related products and software, merged with Cadmus in 2007, with the intention to develop the company into a major international provider of payment terminals. It went into receivership due to unsustainable debt, lack of investment capital and a weaker than expected trading performance in its retail automation business.

(BusinessWire)

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