Chippenham-based specialist IT group SCISYS has completed the acquisition of German media software firm Annova Systems in a move that it called a “step-change” in its growth prospects.
SCISYS, which has an established media & broadcasting division, paid €11.35m (£9.64m) upfront in cash for Munich-headquartered Annova. The firm, which had earnings of €1.1m on €7.5m revenues last calendar year, has a strong customer base of public and commercial broadcasters across Europe, including the BBC, with which it has a 12-year contract to supply its newsroom software. 
SCISYS said it had a “robust business model” based on its OpenMedia software, which, according to SCISYS, is regarded as best in class and will strongly complement SCISYS’s dira! product suite developed by its media & broadcast division.
Annova also boasts a highly competent and experienced workforce.
It is cash generative with an order book expected to have exceeded €30m at the end of 2016, a growing pipeline of prospects and robust revenue visibility.
The deal includes a three-year earn-out of up to €16.48m in cash or shares subject to Annova hitting key commercial targets.
“With its latest major version release launched in 2014, OpenMedia provides next-generation newsroom system functionality, enabling story-centric workflows for news to be created for distribution on any medium,” SCISYS said in a statement to the London Stock Exchange following completion of the acquisition.
The acquisition has been funded mainly from a new bank loan and is expected to be strongly earnings enhancing from this year.
Annova, which already has a small team in London and satellite offices in Cologne, Hamburg, New York, Paris and Singapore, develops software used by journalists and editors to streamline editorial workflows across TV, radio and online.
It employs around 70 people and has a customer base that includes major public and commercial broadcasters in Germany, Switzerland, France, Belgium and Turkey with more than 50,000 daily users.
SCISYS employs nearly 450 staff across its offices in Chippenham, Bristol, Leicester and Reading and two in Germany suppling bespoke software systems, and IT-based support services to the space, government, defence and environment sectors.
The acquisition comes hot on the heels of a pre-Christmas boost for SCISYS’ space division, which landed a €3.3m (£2.8m) contract with European aerospace giant Airbus to build the payload operations centre for a Franco-German satellite climate mission.
SCISYS will provide central functions for the payload operations centre for the methane remote sensing lidar missions satellite MERLIN along with interfaces to the overall satellite ground segment of the project.
The contract will run until the planned April 2021 launch of MERLIN, which will measure the concentration of methane in the Earth’s atmosphere.
SCISYS chief executive Klaus Heidrich said: “Scisys is recognised as a long-term partner to Airbus and the German Space Agency, and I am very pleased to strengthen our role as a valuable partner of the German national space programme.
“This is another great achievement for SCISYS and its space division, and further supports the group's positive outlook.”
