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Micro Focus half year profits soar 28.7% as HPE buy kicks in
Software group Micro Focus said interim pre-tax profits rose 28.7% to $145.7m after the acquisition of Hewlett Packard Enterprise's software unit helped to increase revenue.
The company also warned that revenues for the year to October 31 2018 would fall by 2%-4% from 2017's $4.2bn.
Operating profits rose 34.7% to $220m, while basic earnings per share fell 9.5% to 35.83 cents. The dividend was hoisted by 16.4% to 34.60 cents a share. Revenues grew by 80% to $1.2bn.
If the HPE merger was taken out of the numbers, revenue fell 2.9% to $664.7m. Within Micro Focus's existing business, the SUSE product portfolio grew revenue by 13% to $164.4m and the product portfolio fell 7.05% to $0.5bn from $0.537bn.
The company also said its chief financial officer Mike Phillips would move to a new position as director of mergers and acquisitions with his old role filled by Chris Kennedy, a former CFO of ARM and easyJet.
It added that as a result of a change in year-end there would be a shift in licence revenue towards the new year-end of October 31 which will lead to second half revenues being higher than those in the six months to 30 April.
"We will seek to re-balance this revenue weighting in future years," the company said.