According to reports, London-based Civica plans to float on the Alternative Investment Market in London at some point during the first quarter of 2004, and this is expected to value the company at about 50m pounds ($85m).
The flotation will make Civica the first IT services firm to make a stock market listing since DigitalNet Holdings’ IPO on Nasdaq in October. This company, which targets the US government sector, saw its share price rise significantly above its issue price of $17 on the first day of trading. Its shares were still trading above this price at $19 on December 9, suggesting that the market might be picking up for technology services IPOs.
Civica provides a range of software and services for some 700 local authorities in the UK, US and Australia, as well as 47 UK police forces, 250 NHS healthcare trusts, and 250 libraries around the world. Civica develops specific applications to target the back-office functions within these target clients, including automatic number plate recognition, fleet management, parking enforcement, library management, and revenues and benefits software systems. It also provides the surrounding IT support and managed services to underpin this. The company’s largest single contract is with the NHS, with which it has a $31m project signed in August 2003 to provide desktop management and systems integration services.
The market in which Civica operates remains fairly buoyant and during its most recent reported year ended September 30, 2002, Civica announced revenue growth of 17% to 86.5m pounds ($147m), and made an operating profit of 7.7m pounds ($13.1m), up from 6.2m pounds ($10.5m) in 2001. Civica was originally part of the Sanderson Group, and became a separate company following a management buy-out in December 1999; at the time Sanderson was taken private by its investors.
This article is based on material originally produced by ComputerWire.
