Dublin-based travel software business Datalex has reported a pretax loss for 2009 of $4.5 million, despite an increase in transaction values and a reduction in costs. Last year’s $4.5m loss compares with 2008’s deficit of $1.4m. “Our customers repeatedly reduced IT budget spend and demand for our professional services throughout the year, with potential new…
Datalex reports $4.5m loss
Dublin-based travel software business Datalex has reported a pretax loss for 2009 of $4.5 million, despite an increase in transaction values and a reduction in costs.
Last year’s $4.5m loss compares with 2008’s deficit of $1.4m. “Our customers repeatedly reduced IT budget spend and demand for our professional services throughout the year, with potential new customers deferring plans to invest in their systems and withdrawing requests for proposals already issued to the market,” it explained.
Datalex, which is listed on the Irish Stock Exchange, told the market in early November that full year losses were likely to come in at around $3m.
It said “our operating result for Q4 was below expectations, in particular our transaction revenue was almost 10% behind expectation (approx $370k), largely due to reduced demand across almost all sectors.”
It estimates that $500m-worth of ancillary products are sold through its platform, resulting in a 24% increase in transaction revenues during the year to $13.3m. Total revenues however dropped by 18% from $33m to $27.1m.
On the other hand, costs excluding product development were slashed by 16% during 2009. It said that its “product investment cycle” is now almost complete. “As such we anticipate a projected spend on product development in 2010 in the region of $2.5m, down from $4.5m in 2009 and $7.5m in 2008,” it said.
2010 has gone according to plan so far, with Datalex noting an improvement in the new business pipeline. It said that “in the last week we have also received confirmation that a major Asian airline will use our TDP platform for both their on-line distribution and call centre operations, with deployment expected to start in early Q2.”
