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Announcement Details - 13th November 2003
FFASTFILL PLC ('FFASTFILL')
Interim Accounts 2003

Chairman's statement
Introduction
The past six months has been a period of consolidation and progress for the company providing a strong platform from which to launch our new application service offerings. The results, which we are announcing today, show a significant improvement over the equivalent period last year.

Continued improvements
The market continues to be challenging but significant progress has been made:

• Turnover has grown by 317% to £1.6m.
• We have delivered two further quarterly software releases, both on time, to specification and with high levels of reliability.
• We have further enhanced the product functionality raising all components to the level of our industry leading risk management system.
• We have increased again the scope of our exchange connections to include LME, IPE, and e-CBOT. These bring connectivity to 12 exchanges worldwide.
• We have made good progress in bringing forward our next generation of software; this is planned for delivery during the first half of 2004.
• We now have a strong pipeline, which will lead to more new customer signings later this financial year.

Operational review
Strategy:
As I said in my first statement as Chairman of this company, our new strategy is to provide our customers with our applications delivered as a service. I am pleased to say that we will be launching this new service later on this month. Our ability to launch this service is a reflection of the success that we have had in both raising the reliability of our software to set a new benchmark for the industry, and in implementing our uniquely resilient exchange connectivity platform, FFastConnect. We believe that this service approach to technology deployment will become routine in the industry over the next five years and that this new service will give the company a significant first mover advantage over the coming year.

Services:
The FFastConnect platform, which provides the only Service Level Agreement (SLA) based exchange connectivity service for the industry is now operational and is meeting its extremely stretching operational objectives. Interest remains strong amongst a number of prospects that recognise the strategic importance of the proposition.

Software:
The two quarterly releases of the software were both delivered on time and to specification, and have been deployed smoothly across our customers. As well as proving highly reliable, we believe that the software suite is competitive with any other available. The investments we have made in establishing our high quality, low cost development facility in Prague now allow us to move into a market leading position as our new software architecture is deployed during the first half of 2004.

USA:
FFastTrade, our Introducing Broker, experienced a mixed overall performance in the six months. The business has now been refocused around the popular Citrix offering. This saw growth in the year of 100% to 60 users, as a result of our investment in sales and marketing. In addition we have started to make progress in marketing our application service to US-based institutions. Success in this area will help us to implement our strategy of developing these two businesses down parallel paths over the next six months.

DrKW:
Our relationship with DrKW is now well established. During the period we have delivered two new releases of software seamlessly, in line with our quarterly development cycle. Our FFastConnect platform is now in the live environment, and has demonstrated the value of remote application delivery across this high performance platform. We were able to deliver a "first" with DrKW when we implemented the first direct market order execution system for LME trading.

Outlook
While budgets for IT expenditure in the financial services sector remain constrained, derivatives volumes are growing and our prospects and customers are looking for efficiency improvements in the delivery of their technology. The board has confidence in the competitiveness of the company's software and services and in its ability to deliver its plans.

Keith Todd
Executive Chairman
13 November 2003

NOTES TO THE INTERIM RESULTS
1. Accounting policies The accounts have been prepared has been prepared on the basis of the accounting policies set out in the audited accounts for the year ended 31 March 2003.
Going concern
The directors have prepared the accounts on a going concern basis.
During the period, the group made losses of £1.2 million and had net assets at 30 September 2003 of £549,000. As disclosed in the Chairman's Statement on pages 1 to 2, the directors have taken steps to further develop the group's range of products and services, which will lead to new customers signings later this year. The going concern basis depends upon the expected benefit from signing new long term contracts.
On this basis, the directors have prepared the accounts on the going concern basis. The accounts do not include any adjustments that would arise if this basis were inappropriate.

2. Exceptional items
Exceptional items in the accounts for the period ended 30 September 2003 relate to the costs of closing the trading operations of FFastFill France SAS.

3. Tax on loss on ordinary activities The company has no liability to UK Corporation tax as the company made a loss for the purposes of UK Corporation Tax. During the year ended 31 March 2003 the company received a research and development tax credit.

4. Loss per share and diluted loss per share Loss per share is calculated by dividing the loss attributable to ordinary shareholders for each period by the weighted average number of ordinary shares in issue during each period, as follows:

4. Loss per Share and Diluted Loss per Share (continued) Diluted loss per share is calculated by dividing the loss attributable to ordinary shareholders by the weighted average number of ordinary shares in issue during each period, adjusted for the weighted number of share options outstanding at the end of each period, retrospectively adjusted for the exercise of dilutive share options.

6. Financial information
The financial information set out in this interim report does not constitute statutory accounts as defined in section 240 of the Companies Act 1985. The financial information for the six month periods ended 30 September 2002 and 2003 is unaudited. Information relating to the year ended 31 March 2003 is derived from the statutory accounts for that period which have been delivered to the Registrar of Companies. The auditors' report on those accounts was unqualified and did not contain a statement under section 237(2) or (3) of the Companies Act 1985.

7. Interim dividend
No interim dividend is proposed.

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