Infobank International Holdings Plc, the UK-based software reseller, is aspiring to be a big player in the business to business electronic commerce market. Having founded the company on electronic reselling of software, the company is now ready to expand and exploit its long term development of an intranet e-commerce system called Intrade, developed from a pilot scheme commissioned by British Gas. Results for the 12 months to September 30, show losses of 1.8m pounds on 24m pounds of revenues, but Infobank only joined London’s Alternative Investment Market in February this year and losses are roughly on target. Figures include 900,000 pounds of flotation costs and a further hefty amount for the cost of developing the new product, Intrade. The company also completed the acquisition of fellow reseller the Software Corporation Plc in June for 8.25m pounds which necessitated a certain amount of internal reorganization. The result is that the software business is buoyant and producing better margins than ever, while generating substantially all of the group’s revenues. But Infobank thinks it now has a top notch business to business electronic commerce product which it will target at the larger corporate customers indirectly through more influential companies like Anderson Consulting and KPMG. Also bubbling under is Infobank’s Trustmarque project, which aims to be the third and last company to gain acceptance as a worldwide software licence clearing house; a trusted third-party who will control the registration and enforcement of software licenses on behalf of electronic resellers. Infobank says it has been given the nod by Microsoft Corp and will be operating alongside Litlenet LLC and Paul Allen’s Cybersource Corp as a clearing house by early 1998. The company will not pay a dividend.
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