AIM-listed secure payments and customer contact centre software supplier Eckoh (ECK:AIM) rose 3.6% to 50p on news it has enjoyed a storming first half. In a half year trading update the company said it has enjoyed a ‘very strong first half to the year with excellent levels of contracted business and double-digit revenue growth in both the UK and US.’ For the six months ended 30 ...

Despite all the uncertainty created by Brexit the latest reading from the Quoted Companies Alliance/YouGov Small & Mid-Cap Sentiment index suggests most small and medium-sized companies in the UK are optimistic about 2019. Nearly three quarters of the companies surveyed expect to increase the number of employees in the coming 12 months and 47% are looking to raise capital over the same time ...

The market mood over technology stories remains pretty bleak given recent controversies at global giants like Facebook, Amazon and others. But this is masking positives elsewhere, particularly among smaller companies. We believe Eckoh (ECK:AIM) is a great example. A further deterioration in sentiment towards the tech sector is a risk but we feel the negative tide can be turned. Full year to ...

Nothing stays the same forever and the best companies are those which are flexible and innovative enough to adapt. Without this capacity they risk becoming obsolete and are likely to face a steady decline in profit and cash flow until they eventually go bust or the remaining viable bits of the business are broken up and sold. The guiding motto of Andrew Grove, the man behind the rise of US ...

Eckoh (ECK:AIM) 48p Gain to date: 23.1% Original entry point: Buy at 39p, 15 September 2016 Results for the year to 31 March 2017 show the effects of cost over-runs from its now closed professional services arm and more rapid software-as-a-service (SaaS) take-up in the US. The contact centre automation and secure payment solutions supplier has impressively bounced back, beating ...

Monday 12 June It is eight months since the last profit miss and it is only recently that Eckoh’s (ECK:AIM) share price has come out of investment stasis, rallying about 18% through May. Full year results to 31 March on 12 June will show that the contact centre automation and secure payment solutions supplier is back on the growth track. Expect better cash generation than originally ...

There’s plenty going on with technology stocks that feature in our list of Great Ideas. We now take a look at some recent bits of news to keep you up to date with events. Gaming engine designer Quixant (QXT:AIM) impressed with its full year results on 22 March. Revenue was 5% better than forecast while pre-tax profit was bang on the money at $13.8m. Analysts have lifted their 2017 estimates ...

Now is the time to pile in to Eckoh (ECK:AIM), a company we have liked for ages but whose valuation has previously looked very full. That has changed following a one-third sell-off sparked by a profit warning. This looks like an opportunistic entry point not a millions miles away from a similar call we made on Amino Technologies (AMO:AIM) on 29 October 2015 at 114p. Its shares are today trading ...

Contact centre and secure payment solution provider Eckoh (ECK:AIM) has warned that it will miss profit expectations slamming the share price into a 27% nose dive to 35.5p. That's 35% off the record 55p hit in December 2015. The reasons are two-fold. First, the Hemel Hempstead-based firm has experienced cost overruns in a large, complex project in a non-core division of PSS, the US secure ...

Retirement property expert McCarthy & Stone (MCS) shocks the market with a different message about trading since the Brexit vote versus the mainstream housebuilders. Its shares fall 12% to 184.45p after noting fewer reservations since the end of June and higher cancellation levels. This has negative read-across to other housebuilders with shares in most of the sector falling by 2% to ...

Consultancy giant PwC has revealed plans to recruit over 1,000 technology specialists between now and 2020 as it delves ever deeper into the wide-ranging market for all things digital security. We're talking about effective threat vulnerability management, predictive analytics or intelligence and IT risk and resilience strategies. This is far from the first shot fired in the cyber security ...

Automated communications and payments platform supplier Eckoh (ECK:AIM) is hitting a hot streak in the US, signing two sizeable new contracts and securing an important new seller agreement. These developments have powered the share price to within touching distance of an all-time high. The pair of new contracts are estimated to be worth around $7 million (£4.8 million) over the next ...

It's welcome news for investors to see a new cyber security specialist join AIM today, say hello to Osirium Technologies (OSI:AIM), a small but ambitious company hoping to hit the fast lane of growth. I won't bang on about it, more information is available in this week's issue of SHARES, which subscribers can read here (click here if you're not a sub and want a trial). That takes the number of ...

Financial technology, or fintech, remains one of the most exciting investment growth markets yet opportunities are limited for private investors. Analysts at stock broker Peel Hunt still see the cyber security space as the ‘most investible angle on Fintech,’ the City number crunchers favouring FTSE 250 pair NCC (NCC) and Sophos (SOPH), plus identity verification specialist GB Group ...

This company has really grown up during the past three years or so. Eckoh (ECK:AIM) may have started out from the humble beginnings of auto booking cinema tickets thanks to its clever voice recognition software algorithms but it today straddles far greater markets, running the automated bits of vast contact centres (what used to be called call centres) of some very large organisations to payments ...

London shares are on the retreat in early trade on Tuesday as jittery investors mull a mixed bag of corporate results and fret over weak trade figures coming out of China. The FTSE 100 index slidfes around 65 points, or roughly 1%, to 6,120, matching similar gloom across Europe and on Asian markets overnight. Wall Street closed up. Kantar Worldpanel's latest grocery share figures reveal ...

London shares head lower in early trade on Wednesday as traders took the opportunity to book profits from yesterday's heady trade. The FTSE 100 is down 28 points at 6,240. E&P Soco International (SIA) falls 18% to 146p as it reports production from its H5 platform on the Te Giac Trang field in Vietnam is slightly below expectations and warns future cash returns to shareholders will be ...

Fast-growing voice recognition and secure payments business Eckoh (ECK:AIM) has locked down patents behind its CallGuard payments technology. The system works by encrypting the tones transmitted by the phone when someone ringing a call centre enters their payment card number and PIN as they complete a purchase. ‘This means that call centre agents cannot access the data, preventing a major ...

Having hit the streets in its home US market on 16 October 2014 Apple Pay is finally heading to Britain. Reports suggest we could get the technology as soon as 14 July, although the date hadn’t been confirmed as Shares goes to press. General consensus is that the mobile payments service from the world’s biggest technology company Apple (AAPL:NDQ) will begin to transform the way iPhone, iPad ...

Word that Eckoh (ECK:AIM) is walking away from a potential £88 million takeover of rival Netcall (NET:AIM) is a blow. The cash and shares deal, mainly shares, was revealed on 25 June, so it has taken just eight days of talks for the holes in the plan to be revealed. It's a real shame, tying these two similar businesses together makes sense in many ways. Both have calved leading positions ...