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CE of Transacsys PLC discusses market and product strategy in European cashless market in Wall Street Transcript Interview Full article published: 06/20/2002     MARTIN PECK is Chief Executive with Transacsys PLC


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This interview is a small excerpt from a comprehensive interview published in The Wall Street Transcript as part of the Technology Sector, available at (001-212-952-7433) or http://www.twst.com/sectors/techno.html

TWST: Would you give us a brief historical sketch and summary of Transacsys?

Mr Peck: The company was formed in the UK in 1982 as GiroVend. The main business today remains a Smart Card Application and Systems Integration business. Today the focus is on providing hardware, software and service applications to the cashless payments and access control corporate and public sector marketplace. The company is a market leader in the UK and Europe in the cashless market with over 700 customers in the UK, large blue-chip and public sector clients. The business was floated on the London stock exchange in 1997 as GiroVend Cashless Systems plc and continued to focus on the cashless catering and vending market. There was then a change of name to Transacsys plc and the Company went from the main market to the AIM market in London in March, 1999. A new management team came onboard and raised around GBP17 million of new money to exploit Internet and e-commerce technologies – initially with a trading marketplace for the UK dentist industry. In February 2001 the company acquired a leading access control business called Public Access Terminals Limited. In the period from August 2001 through to January 2002 the non smart card parts of the business have been exited – today we are looking add to the portfolio with further internally developed and acquired smart card technology applications. I joined the business in September 2001 to refocus Transacsys on improving operational efficiency and customer satisfaction, profitability and cash flow. This has largely been achieved to a satisfactory level – the customer call centre has achieved significant improvement in the last quarter: the challenge for the next 6 months and beyond is to procure further operational improvements and more particularly revenue growth alongside the excting new “G2” product programme. The market strategy is to expand the size of the cashless market in Europe via the new product set; to move to new application areas and to increase market perception of the Girovend PAT access control brand (marketed as “Esi”). The product strategy is based on bringing significant improvement in the benefits and value to corporate and public sector clients utilizing the latest highly cost effective; functional and robust platforms: in “G2” this means the newly released Microsoft .NET framework and the Bosche CANbus communication platform. Fundamentally this will mean better and more flexible communications interface (including for example bluetooth or mobile network); remote and telematic capability for management data and remote diagnostics; web and thin client enablement and finally the presentation and mining of data to provide highly functional customer transactional data to our trade partners and end users. Looking further ahead we are planning into new markets such as government sector applications and new “EMV” and micro payments and purse card technologies. Our focus is on the customer and function rather than on proprietary card operating systems and technologies – where we will always continue to work with a wide range.

TWST: Is there anything else you will be tuning up or where you see room to improve?

Mr Peck: Our focus will remain on focusing on current and likely customer need in using smart card (or any successor “token” technology for that matter, such as biometric identification) – rather than on technology led product development for its own sake. The business today and in the last 9 months has actually performed well and above expectations.

TWST: Who do you run up against?

Mr Peck: That’s a difficult question because we usually see one off applications, either bespoke or for specific projects, but not rolled out industry-wide in the government sector there are a number of joint venture and specific project companies, for example the “Transys” consortium selected for the London underground smart card ticketing project. In the cashless payments market our biggest competitor is the customer having a cash rather than cashless epusr environment.

TWST: The public space and government e-business initiative seems to be a recurring theme. Is this the key growth opportunity for you?

Mr Peck: It’s particularly exciting as I see strong signs of growth and I see that Transacsys is well placed to go to market with a strong and robust offering and we have existing penetration, for example we believe we have 19% of the non-school’s education market. Many of the universities are using our products and increasingly so are schools, which traditionally has been cost prohibitive.

TWST: Do you have the management team in place now to execute and take these opportunities?

Mr Peck: After the changes of last year I think we have now a stable team that can deliver our scale of business for at least the next 12 months – but we are always looking out for good talent at all levels of the organization and often bringing in new blood help to keep things fresh and dynamic.

TWST: How strong is your balance sheet?

Mr Peck: We have a strong balance sheet and as we reported recently over £1.3 million of cash and £4.1 milion of working capital and no debt. We have also funded from our own resources the R&D programme. We have financial objectives to further improve working capital conversion to cash and as previously stated have spent a good deal of last year divesting ourselves of cash burning non-core activities.

TWST: How has this reorganization been received by the investment community?

Mr Peck: We try to keep in touch with all the major shareholders regularly, and they have responded very positively and recognized the advances made. We recognize in the next financial period we need to demonstrate consistent profitability.

TWST: What metrics or milestones do you think an investor should track in order to fairly assess your progress?

Mr Peck: Profitability; cash; revenue from our second financial quarter (starting 1 June 2002) and new product release.


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This interview is a small excerpt from a comprehensive interview published in The Wall Street Transcript on 06/20/02. For more information call (212) 952 7400. The Wall Street Transcript does not endorse any of the comments made by interviewees, and does not make stock recommendations.

Copyright 2002, Wall Street Transcript Corp.

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