One year on from the biggest acquisition in its history, Geac Computer Corp, the Canadian systems and software company has proved what a shrewd deal maker it is with its second quarter profits quadrupling to $28.1m and revenues doubling to $214m. When Geac bought Dun & Bradstreet Software for $191m last year, there was a suspicion that it had bitten off more than it could chew. The D&B division was, after all, twice Geac’s own size in revenue terms. But in the last twelve months, Geac’s CEO Bill Nelson is claiming over $70m of net cash generated by the old D&B business, putting it easily on target to pay back its acquisition costs in around three years. The cash generated has been so plentiful that the $40m loan taken out to partially finance the deal has been paid back in full almost a year early. And Geac’s cost cutting exercises to bring ten years of D&B losses to an end have brought net profit margins up from 13% in quarter three last year to 25% in the second quarter just past. Geac’s shares, which are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, rose $1.93 to $30.86 nearly three times their price a year ago when the D&B deal was made.
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