City Announcements
Morse enhances specialist industry capabilities with acquisition of Xayce
Embargoed for release 7.00am, Thursday 13 September 2007
Morse plc ("Morse" or the "Group"), the Business and IT professional services company, today announces the acquisition of 100% of the share capital of consultancy services business, Xayce plc ("Xayce"), for an initial consideration of £3.6million, made up of £2.35m of cash and £1.25m of shares in Morse plc. On acquisition, Xayce has net assets in excess of £1.35m.
Further consideration of up to £2.5m payable in Morse plc shares, conditional upon the achievement by Xayce of agreed profitability and other targets over the period to 30 June 2010.
About Xayce
Based in Manchester and founded in 1998 by a number of ex-Accenture consultants, Xayce is a privately owned company which delivers back office transformation services to organisations in Insurance, Retail Banking and Local Government. Its client base of over 70 private and public sector organisations include Royal & Sun Alliance, Allied Irish Bank, Lloyds TSB, Abbey, Barclays Bank and several City and County councils across the UK. Xayce employs 25 permanent staff as well leveraging an extensive network of associates, it is also a member of the Management Consultancies Association.
In the year to 31 March 2007, Xayce reported revenues of £4.0m, of which approximately 75% came from financial services clients. Xayce will be integrated into Morse’s Management Consulting business unit and the acquisition will be earnings enhancing in the current financial year ending 30 June 2008.
Background to the acquisition
Morse is a fully integrated professional services company operating under one brand and providing advisory and execution services focused in three main areas: management consulting, applications consulting and infrastructure consulting. The Morse strategy is to continue to develop its service offerings in all three areas and in the four key industry sectors in which the business operates: financial services, media & communications, commercial, and public sector.
The acquisition of Xayce will enable Morse to deepen its industry sector knowledge in financial services and the public sector and to accelerate the development of its management consultancy business.
Commenting on today’s announcement, Kevin Alcock, Chief Executive of Morse, said:
"We already have a strong market position in financial services, and the acquisition of Xayce will further enhance our management consultancy capabilities in Insurance and Retail Banking as well as giving us additional consultancy capability and relationships to more effectively position ourselves for the back office transformation work coming on stream in Local Government.
At our full year results, we stated that we would make acquisitions where they offer the opportunity to add specialist capabilities or accelerate the Group’s overall development effort and it is pleasing to be able to deliver on that objective with the addition of such a high quality business to the Group."
Contacts:
Morse plc Tel: 020 8380 8000
Kevin Alcock, Chief Executive Officer
Eric Dodd, Group Finance Director
Financial Dynamics Tel: 020 7831 3113
Harriet Keen
Haya Chelhot