TRACSIS, the Leeds-based transport technology firm, has continued its journey towards a clearer focus on its core markets with its second deal this month.
It has sold its Australian division, Tracsis Traffic Data Pty (TTD), to the company’s managing director Martin Prowse in a deal worth up to £530,000 (AUS $1.08m).
The disposal is part of Tracsis’s strategy to focus on its core markets and to “operate in high value, niche markets”. TTD had generated pre-tax profits of £0.25m on revenues of £2.2m in the year to July.
In a statement, the company said: “The board is focused on continuing to drive its growth strategy in the UK and overseas but no longer believe TTD’s data capture operations in Australia is required to achieve this goal.
“The directors believe that disposing TTD, which has limited trading visibility and does not have critical mass, mitigates the group’s execution risk which is inherent in operations of this kind.”
There will be an initial payment of £140,000 (AUS £285,000) with further payments totalling £390,000 (AUS $799,000) over the next three years.
The sale follows the announcement earlier this month of the purchase of IT business Ontrac in a deal worth up to £19.5m.
Ontrac is a software development and IT solutions company that works extensively in the UK rail sector, which complements Tracsis’s software development and consulting division.
Tracsis was spun out of the University of Leeds 10 years ago and is still headquartered in the city, with eight other UK offices, and employs 400 people. Its most recent financial year, to July, showed a 14% increase in revenues to £25.4m with adjusted pre-tax profits increasing 16% to £5.8m.
In the last six months it has also bought traffic management firm SEP in a £2.6m deal and invested up to £1m for a 29.4% stake in mobile phone data analytics firm Citi Logik.
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