Sage
‘Perfectly solid, just not very interesting,” is one analyst’s take on Sage’s halfway figures. Much the same could be said of the UK’s biggest software company, and that is probably how the market and Sage want it. The company increasingly looks like two different businesses bolted together, providing mutual support.
On the one hand is the legacy business, supplying entrepreneurs and small businesses with software. This is sluggish, because the products are quite old and not flying off the shelves. It is, though, unlikely to go away, because no one wants to go to the trouble, and take the inevitable risk, of changing a perfectly reliable IT system. Recurring revenues were up by 10 per cent in the half year to the end of