Confident Accumuli coughs up first ever dividend

Buy-and-build security specialist says payout reflects its positive outlook following sales and profit surge

Managed security services specialist Accumuli has paid out its first dividend after posting a healthy rise in annual sales and profits.

After breaking even in its fiscal 2011/12, the buy-and-build specialist posted an after-tax profit of £3.5m from continuing and discontinued operations for its fiscal year to 31 March 2013.

In a year in which it bought VAR EdgeSeven for £3.2m and sold its Webscreen DDoS mitigation intellectual property to Juniper for £6.3m, revenue from continuing and discontinued operations rose 17 per cent to £14.8m.

Group EBITDA from continuing and discontinued operations pogoed from £2.1m to £2.5m year on year.

Since its year end, the AIM-listed outfit has snapped up two-factor authentication vendor Signify.

Chairman Nick Kingsbury dubbed 2012 a "strong" year for the VAR and said its decision to award a maiden dividend of 0.4p a share "demonstrated the positive outlook for the business".

"The IT security market in which we operate continues to grow in terms of scale and sophistication," he said. "Increasingly, businesses of all sizes are turning to an expert such as Accumuli to help them secure their business, deliver projects on time and reduce the cost of ongoing management."