Microfilm Reprographics Plc, the London-based microfilming bureau, doesn’t have a lot to say for itself, and any comments on its interim financial results announced yesterday had to be extracted with some effort. The company has done well to increase revenues and profits when its core business is in what must be a dying market (see below). The figures do not include any contribution from Memex, the East Kilbride, Glasgow-based text-retrieval system business acquired last October, since it came on board towards the period end. Memex could be described as the best thing that has happened to Microfilm Repro in a long time, being the company’s first step away from microfilm – under remorseless threat from optical disk. (Memex’s products and corporate history were outlined in some detail in October issue 1,783 of Computergram). Memex was making losses at the time of acquisition, and Microfilm chairman John Redmond says his company was prepared to plough up to UKP600,000 into the Scottish company, to provide it with some working capital until it turned itself around. But Memex has already begun to trade profitably, on a month-to-month basis, so all that cash may now not be needed. Redmond disputed the suggestion that Memex is allowed to operate autonomously, as we had been told in October by Memex marketing director Keith Owen – the name didn’t ring any bells with the chairman. He said that Memex has to report monthly back to Microfilm, and that Microfilm has a say in everything Memex does. No resellers have yet been set up on the continent, but this is still the plan for Memex, which sells its hardware and software-based document management systems direct in the UK and through resellers in the US. Some UKP750,000 has been spent over the first six months on some small acquisitions in the microfilm bureau arena – most of these were businesses in trouble which Microfilm lifted for next to nothing, much of the UKP750,000 being invested actually as working capital. Redmond says Microfilm is still talking to other companies with a view to making further acquisitions that will take the group further beyond the boundaries of the microfilm business, but couldn’t put a date on when an announcement might be made in that direction.
