Thursday, July 27, 2006

Autonomy achieves 70% market share (FT)

Autonomy has recorded a sharp increase in profits on the back of growth in the multimedia search market that it dominates.

The $500m acquisition in November of Verity, a US rival, and growing demand for companies wanting to sort through unstructured data, has given the UK group a market share of about 70 per cent, it said yesterday. Such is Autonomy's grip on the high end of enterprise search that it would struggle to make acquisitions, according to Mike Lynch, chief executive. "It's unlikely that we'll do another large transaction," he said.

Revenues in the first half of the year rose from $39m to $117.1m as Autonomy added companies such as Whirlpool and RioTinto to a customer base that already spans the BBC and Nasa.

Pre-tax profit rose in the first half from $8.2m to $28m. Earnings per share doubled from $0.04 to $0.08. Tom Braithwaite, London
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006

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