Lossmaking Blue Prism, whose losses deepened in the first half, has agreed to buy software group Thoughtonomy for up to £80m as it seeks to expand its cloud-based products and drive into artificial intelligence.
The company that has developed robotic software to do repetitive tasks, such as filling in forms, reported on Wednesday that its sales for the six months to April had nearly doubled. It however widened its loss to £31m on an IFRS15 basis. Adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, not updated using the latest reporting standards, showed a loss of £34m, from a loss of £4.2m a year earlier.
Group revenue for the first half of its fiscal year rose 82 per cent to £40.4m, Blue Prism said in a statement on Wednesday.
Shares in the group fell about 11 per cent in early London trading.
Blue Prism said it agreed to buy London-based Thoughtonomy shares from chief executive and founder Terry Walby, the group’s private investors and its employee option holders. Once the agreement has been finalised, the software group will pay up to £63m in its own shares over a two-year period, while the remaining £17m will be paid in cash within 18 months.
Blue Prism specialises in robotic process automation, a market that it says will develop into a “significant software category”. The group’s software carries out tasks that for decades were done by clerical staff, including cross referencing and answering phones.
The acquisition of the six-year-old company is an “important step in targeting the mid-tier and developing our enterprise cloud approach”, said Blue Prism’s chief executive and co-founder Alastair Bathgate.
