UK-based Pegasus Plc has had an excellent year, with pre-tax profits climbing 46.4% to 1.7m pounds and revenues up 57.3% to 12.4m pounds(including 2.9m pounds from CSM, acquired in April 1997). But what’s amazing is that until now, growth has been achieved without the development of a single, truly Windows-based product. Pegasus sells software to ultra conservative, predominantly owner-managed businesses. And its flagship modular accounting package, called Opera, is still based around MS-DOS. Its very easy to forget how little need there is for leading edge IT ‘solutions’ at the smaller end of the spectrum, even in the technologically literate US market. Pegasus has created a Windows front end for its best selling Opera product, but 80% of the company’s 50,000 users are still running non-Windows packages. And this is what the customers are happy with, explains chief executive Jonathan Hubbard-Ford. Small businesses have no need for the latest whistles and bells, and evangelical sales people from companies like Peoplesoft Inc would probably be laughed out of the building. You want me to spend how much? they’d say. But although the pace of change is somewhat slower, Pegasus hasn’t been standing still, and scheduled for July 1998 is the launch of the companies first 32-bit, Windows NT-based alternative, newly christened M power. It marks a major investment and a huge step forward for this hitherto entirely UK-based niche player. It was built around base code which was purchased part- finished from a Danish company, and Pegasus hopes its new client/server suite will appeal to the larger corporate buyers who currently look elsewhere. Built into the various modules will be a multi-lingual capability, opening up international sales for the first time, and Pegasus is already talking to marketing partners in two European countries and one Asian location. Hubbard-Ford is happy with the July deadline for the proposed launch, and initial reactions from Pegasus’ cautious customers are very positive, he says. The dividend for the year is up 7% at 7.5 pence and the shares rose 7% to 293.5 pence. Still very cheap when compared to its peers like of Sage Plc or even Tetra Plc.
