Total revenue for UNIT4, a software and services company, increased by 16% to €112.1m in the first quarter of the year.
The company said, license growth was greatest in Norway, with a number of major orders in the public sector. The UK also achieved above average growth.
FinancialForce.com, UNIT4’s cloud applications company formed with investment from salesforce.com, also reported growth in the period, said the company.
The company registered organic revenue growth by 7%. License sales increased by 23% and contract revenue grew by 9%. The company said services revenue increased by 15%.
The highest growth was in UNIT4’s SaaS/Subscription business at more than 40%.
Gross margin of the company remained at a level of 91.2%, while total EBITDA grew by 23% to €18.9m, creating an EBITDA margin for Q1 of 16.9%, including investments in FinancialForce.com and reorganisation/reallocation costs in the R&D department.
EBITDA excluding investment in FinancialForce.com and reorganisation costs was €22.8 million, growth of 34% compared with Q1 2010.
UNIT4 CFO Edwin van Leeuwen said, this is the first time ever the company achieved an EBITDA level of 20% by the end of the first quarter.
Based on the current trading environment, the management has reconfirmed the outlook for 2011 given in earlier statements.
UNIT4 UK Managing Director Anwen Robinson said, "In spite of the much debated spending cuts and resulting cautiousness in the economy and business environment, the UK operations have made solid progress in Q1. We have secured new business, extended solutions and services within our existing customer base and are ahead of our EBITDA budget."
Robinson added "Q1 has given us the ideal platform for growth during the rest of the year. We have a strong pipeline and some significant opportunities that we are working on and have embarked on Q2 with renewed energy and enthusiasm."
