Strong contract momentum continues

This reflects success in both the UK and the US in converting significant pipeline opportunities and renewals of existing contracts. The UK has benefitted particularly from its partnership channel, whilst the US has had continued traction with healthcare insurers and the retail sector.

Strong momentum in the UK
New contract wins include the largest Omnichannel agreement Eckoh has won since the acquisition of Klick2Contact in 2016. This 5-year contract, which was won in a competitive tender process, will see Eckoh provide an existing business process outsourcing partner with Omnichannel capability for one of its largest clients, with the services expected to be extended to further clients in due course.

Other new contracts include a secure payments agreement worth an initial £0.8m won through a longstanding telecoms partner, which will see the first implementation on behalf of a large nationwide automotive dealership. We have also entered into new contracts with two utility companies worth £0.4m.

Significant contracts have also been renewed including a three-year agreement for customer engagement with Vue Cinemas, and a two-year renewal with a central government department to continue providing secure payment services. These were the two largest UK contracts to come up for renewal in this financial year.

US traction continues

Building on our success with healthcare insurers we have won further secure payments contracts from this sector, all three years in length, totalling $2.6m in value. We have also signed a three-year contract with a product provider to financial institutions worth over $1m.

In the retail sector we have contracted for our patented CallGuard solution with a well-known multi-channel interiors retailer and this contract is being delivered completely through Eckoh's cloud platform, which is hosted in Amazon Web Services.

Whilst cloud opportunities are still much smaller in size, we do expect this to change over time, and Eckoh is the only US provider who can deliver contact centre payment security through either an on-site deployment, a hosted managed service or in the cloud. The Group's significant US presence, together with our ability to provide completely US-based implementation teams, with ease of integration, and local support are key differentiators identified by customers.

In the Support area of Eckoh's US business, through a new partnership with a multinational technology company, we have renewed a significant contract for a telecommunications client. The partner came to Eckoh having seen the pedigree of our support services and the contract is initially worth $1.0m with the potential to increase to $2.8m depending on future support requirements.

Nik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer, said:

"After an extremely strong first half to the year, it has been very encouraging to see that momentum continue with multiple new contract wins, alongside key renewals, which underpin future market forecasts. These contract wins, with such well-known enterprises, reflects Eckoh's position as the preferred supplier for the largest companies.

We have also made excellent progress with key strategic initiatives, such as establishing a market leading position in cloud delivery for Secure Payments, the ongoing development of our Omnichannel solution and broadening our partner relationships to accelerate our penetration of our key markets."