Diligent Board Member Services posts record growth

Diligent Board Member Services, which supplies software for company directors, continued its sales growth, chalking up a brand new record inside the March quarter and recording its third successive operating profit. Its shares rose to a record high.

Diligent said first quarter sales of US$8.2 million ($10 million) compared with US$3 million within the same three months of 2011 and nearly equal to its revenue for all of calendar 2010. It also compares with US$6.5 million within the December quarter.

The software-as-a-service (Saas) company added 205 new clients within the latest quarter, up from 64 within the year-earlier quarter, including 65 companies listed at the Ny Stock Exchange and 32 Nasdaq companies, it said.

Annualised sales, or likely recurring sales, on the end of the quarter totalled US$32.4 million.

Diligent, which held its annual shareholders' meeting in Auckland yesterday, said its cashflow position also improved by greater than US$3.2 million to US$12.2 million at March 31.

The company expects these trends to continue in the course of the year and Diligent's operating margins, profitability, sales and cash position should all improve. "We feel the corporate is definitely-positioned to deliver another year of remarkable performance and outstanding value to our clients and shareholders," it said.

Diligent now serves 1231 private and non-private companies with greater than 1800 boards and 33,000 users through the world and said sales growth in Europe and Asia-Pacific, "specifically, was gratifying".

It now counts 189 Fortune 1000 companies as clients with 26 added within the latest quarter.

Client upgrades, which the corporate rates as an awesome indicator of purchaser satisfaction, totalled a record US$1.5 million.

The corporate said it recruited and trained three additional account managers, two new customer service people and 3 IT people within the three months to assist handle the expansion.

Diligent shares rose 19c to a record $3.69 yesterday from around $1 this time last year and from as little as 7c in March 2009.

- BusinessDesk