Micro Focus delight at year of big merger and growth

Newbury firm set to be part of one of world's largest pure-play software companies

NEWBURY-based software group Micro Focus International plc has announced its revenues for the six months up to October 31, 2016, increased by 14.2 per cent to $684.7m.

In March last year, the company, with headquarters in Old Bath Road, announced it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the entire share capital of Spartacus Acquisition Holdings Corp, the holding company of Serena Software Inc and its subsidiaries.

The acquisition completed in May and trading results of Serena are included in the unaudited interim results for the six months.

In September, Micro Focus announced it had agreed with Hewlett Packard Enterprises (HPE) to merge with the software business assets of the firm by way of merger with a wholly-owned subsidiary of HPE.

The transaction is expected to complete in the third quarter of the 2017 calendar year.

This will create one of the largest pure-play software companies in the world.

Kevin Loosemore, executive chairman of Micro Focus, said: “The board is delighted with our progress. Our focus on delivering to our customers by making detailed product by product decisions and investments has resulted in the business achieving modest like-for-like revenue growth.

“Mergers and acquisitions continue to be a key component of our strategy.

“The key strategic announcement in the period was the HPE Software transaction which is on target to complete in the third quarter of calendar year 2017.

“This is a complex transaction that will transform the group in a similar way to the Attachmate transaction back in 2014, and provides the opportunity for enhanced shareholder returns over the medium-term.

“The acquisition of Serena completed at the beginning of the period, together with a number of small acquisitions across the business comprising GWAVA Inc, openATTIC on November 1 and the OpenStack IaaS and Cloud Foundry Paas talent and technology assets from HPE which was announced on November 30 and is currently expected to close in the first quarter of calendar year
2017.

“We are delighted to announce that our interim dividend is increasing to 29.73 cents from 16.94 cents, in line with our twice covered dividend policy.”