Crawley, West Sussex-based Macro 4 Plc has seen a year of what it describes as subdued trading. For the year to June 30 pre-tax profits were up by 6.8% to UKP11.21m on turnover up 4.8% to UKP24.4m. Earnings per share rose 8.6% to 34.2 pence and this increase exceeded the growth in pre-tax profits mainly because prior years’ tax credits reduced the group’s total effective tax rate to 30.7% compared with 32.5% last year, even though the average number of shares in issue was greater than last year as a result of staff exercising their rights under the employee share option scheme. Macro 4 is a systems software company providing rental packages to customers using IBM Corp mainframe mid-range systems.
Cancelling
Its products interface with IBM’sVSE, MVS, VM or OS/400 operating systems. Macro 4 says it has noticed an increase in customers cancelling their deals as they change their systems, but says it more than compensates for these with new sales. Overseas business accounted for 83.1% of Macro 4’s turnover, up slightly from last year’s contribution. But unlike last year, when currency fluctuations had significant effect on turnover, movements on the foreign exchange has had little effect. The company has a number of subsidiaries overseas which it says are all cash generative. However the newly established subsidiary in Spain reported a small loss, attributable to a sluggish local economy, poor sales and higher costs than justified by activity. It says it has taken action to rectify the situation. Agents, on the other hand, in the US, Argentina and Chile performed well. Macro 4 says the performance of agents in South East Asia, Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia and Japan were below expectations for the year. In Japan, a second agent has been appointed and distribution is being improved. Macro 4 will pay total dividends for the year of 20 pence net per share, up 12.7% – 8.02 pence as an interim payment plus a proposed final of 11.98 pence. It says it remains confident that companies will continue to use mainframes and mid-range systems and will continue to invest in development of products for those systems. But it remains cautious about future prospects because of the major changes within the computer user environment.
