Alphyra sales strengthen - chief

Alphyra, the Dublin-based provider of electronic transaction services, has had significant improvement in sales in each country it operates in and is comfortable with analysts' projections for the company, chief executive Mr John Nagle said yesterday.

Shares fell to a low of €1.40 earlier this year as the market reacted negatively to its results, which included large write-offs on the sale of its telecoms and computers business, operating losses on continuing operations and disappointing growth in Britain.

After the firm's annual meeting, Mr Nagle said Alphyra's write-down of the goodwill as a result of the sale was misinterpreted by the market. "When we sold it, we took a massive hit on the writedowns of the goodwill and the shareholder who wasn't as familiar with our business looked at those losses and said that must be from the operating business and it wasn't - it was from the writedown of the old business. That's what I mean by misinterpreted, that we lost €30 million, when we didn't. We made a profit in four out of the six countries we operate in, but we failed to communicate that," he said.

He described the UK market, where the firm was forced to re-forecast its projections, as a "bogey", but said it had now turned a corner. The decision by UK operators to adopt a different method of topping up pre-paid mobile phones with a card-based system, rather than a PIN-based system used in other European countries, was holding up penetration, he said. But the firm was meeting projections in its other countries of operation - the Netherlands, Sweden, France and Germany, he said.

But he said the company's decision to stick resolutely to projected numbers was restricting opportunities to expand in other markets.

"If we set up businesses in three or four countries, we're not going to hit our results at the end of the year because of the investments," he said.