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Preliminary Results and Acquisition

FFastFill (LSE: FFA), the leading provider of application services to the global derivatives community, announces results for the financial year ended 31 March 2008, which reflect the group's first period of profitability as well as significant strategic progress. FFastFill is also pleased to announce the acquisition of Exchange Technologies Pty Ltd, to support the Group's Asia Pacific and middle office strategy.

2008 Highlights :

• Revenue growth of 87% to £11.4million (2007: £6.1 million)
• EBITDA of £1.5million (2007: £0.006million )
• Operating Profit of £0.2million (2007: loss £1.1million)
• PAT of £0.9million (2007: loss £1.1million) 
• Cash £2.4million (2007: £1.0million) 
• Operating cash inflow was £2.6 million (2007: cash outflow £0.4million)
• 12 month order book £11.5million (2007: £6.7million)
• Increased the customer base to 79 customers including 20 global banks 
• Successful acquisition and integration of Exchange System Technology (EST now known as FFastFill Post Trade Processing "PTP")

Acquisition of Exchange Technology:

• Acquisition of 100% of Exchange Technology 
• Pty Ltd an Australian company specialising in the provision of middle office software in the APAC region with 16 customers including 12 global banks, three of whom are new customers for FFastFill
• Total Consideration $2.5 million AUD (Equivalent to £1.0 million in cash plus £0.24 million in shares at 7.125 pence per share)
• Exchange Technology to act as the initial corner stone of our Asia Pacific strategy and augment FFastFill's drive to increase penetration in the Derivatives middle office market 
• The acquisition is expected to be earnings neutral in the first year and earnings enhancing in subsequent years

Keith Todd, FFastFill Chairman and CEO, commented:

"These results are the outcome of the hard work that has taken place over the past five years to build a business with global reach that provides a broad service offering to an increasingly wide range of financial institutions throughout their trading day.

Our first year of profitability underlines the coming together of our three-part strategy of building a business which provides trading software as a service, covers front, middle and back office and progressively extends across multiple asset classes.  

Our early adoption of the Software as a Service model in 2003 has already stood us in good stead and as we enter uncertain times in the Financial Services market, our strong visibility of revenues, breadth of customer base and offerings gives us confidence that we can continue to achieve our growth targets."

For further information please contact:

FFastFill plc                +44 (0)20 7665 8900
Keith Todd, Chairman and CEO

Financial Dynamics            +44 (0)20 7831 3113
James Melville-Ross / Matt Dixon

KBC Peel Hunt                +44 (0)20 7418 8900
Oliver Scott / Richard Kauffer 

Chairman's Statement

Introduction

I am delighted to report a strong set of financial results for the year ended 31 March 2008. Revenues have grown very strongly and our first year of profitability has contributed to a strong cash position at the year end.  

In many ways, these results reflect the efforts that we have made over the past few years to build a robust, broadly spread business catering to the needs of some of the world's largest financial organisations. Although we remain mindful of the current market conditions, our future also looks bright thanks to our market positioning and good visibility of revenues.

Financial Review 

Full year revenue grew 87% to £11.4 million (2007 £6.1 million). Application services revenue doubled to £8.4 million (2007 £4.0 million) and now accounts for 74% of our total revenue. Our PTP business, which was acquired during the year, contributed revenues of £3.5 million in the nine months since its acquisition. 

The organic growth of the FFastFill business, excluding revenues resulting from the acquisition of EST, stood at 30%, increasing from £6.1 million in 2007 to £7.9 million in 2008. Our revenue growth has been achieved by increasing the average income per customer and increasing the number of global customers to 20 out of a total of 79 customers.  A year ago, our top three customers accounted for 54% of our total revenues. This number has now been reduced to 31% reflecting the increasingly broad spread of our clients, especially since the acquisition of EST. The average income generated from our top 20 customers has grown to £0.438 million, a growth of 58%, demonstrating the successful outcome of our efforts to increase the numbers of services we are providing to our clients.

The order book for the next twelve months now stands at £11.5 million (2006/7 £6.7 million). Within this, our Application Services order book has grown by 57% to £8.3 million. (2007 £5.3million) 

The increase in revenue and control of operating expenses led to an EBITDA of £1.5 million compared to just £6,000 in 2007. This cost control is demonstrated by the fact that our operating expenses, excluding those arising from the acquisition of EST, increased only marginally, by £345,000 to £5.1 million. Also included within our operating expenses were £210,000 of one time acquisition costs which have now been eliminated as a result of the completion of the integration of EST.  Also the sterling cost of our  Prague  development team increased by £0.2 million as a result of the strengthening Czech Koruna against  Sterling . 

The PBT loss of £0.14 million (2007 loss £1.1 million) includes exceptional costs related to the acquisition of EST of £0.4 million. This was higher in the year than we expected as we completed the full integration earlier than planned. No exceptional costs with respect to the EST acquisition are expected in the new financial year. 

The PAT of £0.9 million (2007 loss £1.1 million) includes £1.0 million of deferred tax asset which has been included in the income statement. We have taken the prudent view to only include a small portion of historic tax losses on the balance sheet at this time. The group has a further £18 million of tax losses that are still regarded as a contingent asset. 

Cash inflow from operations was £2.1 million (2007 Cash outflow £0.4 million). This improvement was substantially due to the elimination of the EBITDA loss in the year and improvement in working capital management. Capital expenditure on fixed assets was £0.6 million (2007 £0.2 million), due to the increased number of customer signings during the financial year and the replacement of some core network equipment. In addition, the company invested £1.0 million (2007 £0.7 million) in product development.

Cash at 31   March 2008 was £2.4 million (2007 £1.0 million). The Board does not intend to pay a dividend at this stage.  

Acquisition of Exchange Technology Pty Limited 

Today's announcement of our acquisition of Exchange Technology ("ET") also adds another strategically important asset to our offering. ET has developed a good market position in the Asia Pacific region for the provision of middle office and trading software tools. As a result it now supports 16 customers including 12 global institutions, three of which are new customers for FFastFill. Over a period of time we are expecting to be able to leverage these relationships to sell additional FFastFill services in the region and to offer the Asia Pacific Clearing House connectivity to the group's other global customers.  

In addition, historically we have managed our global service offering out of  Chicago  and  London . The Exchange Technology acquisition means that we now have representation on the ground in the third major time zone of the  Far East . As a result we will be able to support our clients during daylight hours, anywhere in the world once the operational support is transferred later in the year. 

ET is expected in its year to 30 June 2008 to have revenues of £0.5 million and be broadly breakeven having spent significantly on new Asian exchange gateways in its 2007/8 financial year.  Net assets on completion, while positive, are expected to be of a nominal value.

FFastFill Plc has agreed to purchase 100% of Exchange Technology Pty Limited, for $2.5 million AUD, equivalent to £1.0 million in cash and £0.24 million in shares at 7.125 pence per share.  

Operational Review 

Market environment:

The challenges of the financial market have been well publicised but it is pleasing to report that we have seen clear evidence of the robustness of our business model. This has resulted in continued high levels of growth for our business. We believe our resilience to general market turmoil is the result of a combination of factors:

The recurring nature of our core services revenue 

The key point is that, while we are not immune to general market conditions, we have built a business which significantly mitigates downside risk and we are seeing increasing opportunities as our customers see the benefits of the lower total cost of ownership of our offering and the breadth of our risk offering. 

Strategy: 

We now have three clear building blocks of our strategy: 

Software as a Service (SaaS)
We have been at the forefront of the move to deliver software as a service in the futures trading sector. We continue to invest in this to further improve the quality and reliability of the service, thereby putting further distance between us and our competitors.

Straight Through Processing (STP)
The acquisition of EST in July last year added an important capability to our offering in the 'back office' or 'settlement' arena.  We have also invested heavily in adding our middle office capability to our service offering. The first customer for this new offering will be live in June 2008. This together with the acquisition of ET in  Australia  will mean that we can support our global customers with a common clearing system across the world. 

Our risk management offerings that result from our knowledge and software components across the STP landscape have put us in an ideal position to provide customers with a holistic view of their trading risk profile. This means that we can phase in this capability 'around' the customer's existing risk management approach thus lowering their deployment risk but increasing their operational risk controls. 

Multi Asset Class Trading 
Our primary service offerings continue to be in the ETD market, however we have also integrated other trading environments with customers to offer a single screen that allows trade execution across multiple asset classes. In addition we are launching our first Foreign Exchange trading service for a customer in June 2008.This is as well as the spread betting, CFD and Reuters CME FX services we have operated for several years for some customers.

2008 Operational Progress

Thanks to our focus around these three strategic cornerstones, we saw a number of important new client wins and contract extensions during the year. As a result, we increased our number of clients to 79 (from 44 at the end of last fiscal year) and are now selling to 20 global banks (18).

In June last year, we also announced the acquisition of Exchange Systems Technology Limited for £4.8 million alongside a placing to raise approximately £5.5 million. Our intention was to fulfill an important strategic requirement by combining FFastFill's front office capability with EST's back-office solutions.  In this way we aimed to broaden our product offering and increase our sales opportunities, leading to accelerated growth. These objectives have been met with PTP showing annualised nine months revenues running at £4.8 million (2007 £3.2 million). In the year ended 31 March 2008  PTP made a PBT contribution of £0.250 million. The integration is now fully complete and we have already seen the benefits of cross sales opportunities within the joint customer base.

Staff

The Board would again like to thank the staff in  Chicago ,  London  and  Prague  for the commitment and efforts without which we could not have achieved these results. We are also very pleased with the support we have had from the staff who joined us as part of the EST acquisition and would like to welcome our new colleagues from Exchange Technology.

Outlook

The Board is very pleased with the progress over the last twelve months and believes that the combination of the Company's strong order-book, breadth of customer base and product offering will underpin further significant growth even during the current turbulence in the Financial Services market. The Company has a robust platform from which to carry out its three-pronged strategy and the Board has confidence that it can continue to deliver against these stated aims. 

Keith Todd
Chairman & CEO 
22 May 2008

CONSOLIDATED INCOME STATEMENT for the year ended 31 March 2008

The income statement has been prepared on the basis that all operations are continuing operations.

CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEET as at 31 March 2008

The accounts were approved and authorised for issue by the Board of Directors on 21 May 2008 and were signed on its behalf by:

Keith ToddDirector

COMPANY BALANCE SHEET as at 31 March 2008

The accounts were approved and authorised for issue by the Board of Directors on 21 May 2008 and were signed on its behalf by:

Keith ToddDirector

CONSOLIDATED STATEMENT OF CHANGES IN EQUITY