THE Irish educational software company CBT is likely to continue to grow revenues and profits by 50 per cent every 12 months, for several years to come, its chairman, Mr Bill McCabe, said yesterday. The company was ahead of schedule to hire another 200 workers at its Clonskeagh research and development centre, he added.

Speaking at CBT's annual general meeting in Dublin, Mr McCabe cited the firm's record financial results for 1996, which saw revenues jump 65 per cent to $663 million (£436 million) and soar 112 per cent to $12.7 million.

"The company ended the year with contract backlog, or multi-year contracted business that had not yet been recognised as revenue, of 560.3 million, representing a 122 per cent increase over 1995," he said.

CBT was now the world leader, in revenue and profits, for the educational software sector, he said, and because that market was expanding rapidly, he expected CBT to continue its growth.

"We've been growing on average by 65 to 70 per cent per annum, and we'd be telling investors that we expect to grow by at least 40 to 50 per cent for the next few years," Mr McCabe said.

He said that while CBT was always ready for "opportunistic acquisitions", this growth would in the main be organic.

By the end of 1996, CBT had over 2,000 customers Mr McCabe added. The value of the average contract was now at $60,000 and rising, as was the length of the average contract, at 22 months.

The company's library of titles had doubled in 12 months to 328, he said, and a further 51 new software programs had been added in the first quarter of this year.

Mr Jim Buckley, who took over as chief executive and president of the company in recent months, said he would expect the number of titles to increase at a similar rate in the second quarter.

The company, which has 537 employees worldwide, including 300 in Dublin, was ahead of schedule to hire a further 200 workers at its Clonskeagh research and development centre, said Mr McCabe. Despite reports of some skills shortages, he said CBT had not had any difficulty.

"We're still finding top class recruits in Ireland, and we remain committed to keeping all our development in Ireland - we're an Irish company," he said.

The company, which is listed on New York's Nasdaq stock exchange, would not be drawn on whether or not it would float on the Dublin or London markets.