This year has seen a clutch of technology companies join a UK market that is bereft of their ilk. Sage, the accounting software provider, is a rare elder, first listing on the main market in 1989. But what the FTSE 100 constituent shares with young upstarts such as cybersecurity provider Darktrace or communications chip designer Alphawave is market volatility, as the shares have whipsawed over the past five years.
What’s caused the jitters? Profit-sapping research and development (R&D) spending as it tries to capture work from small businesses shifting towards cloud computing. Higher product-spend and sales and marketing costs hit margins last year and operating profits fell 10 per cent.
But R&D spending has peaked at about 17 per cent of recurring revenue, Steve Hare,