Shares in Craneware climbed more than 5% yesterday after the fast-growing Scottish healthcare IT company unveiled an 18.4% surge in annual pre-tax profit and said it had a "strong pipeline" of new business.
The firm, which is based in Livingston, West Lothian, and specialises in billing and auditing software for the US healthcare industry also said its current year has started well.
Revenues at the company, that had been part-funded by venture capitalist 3i and Scottish Equity Partners before it floated on AIM last year, grew 24% to $18.7m (£10.5m) for the year to the end of June. Pre-tax profits rose to $4.5m for the 12-month period, compared with $3.8m last time.
Craneware's Chargemaster Toolkit software, designed to reduce mischarging in the outpatient market, is now used in 950 hospitals - a 19% increase over last year - in 46 states in the US, where medical bills are extremely detailed.
The company's market exists because some 80% of bills generated by US hospitals are believed to be mishandled.
The US legislative landscape is also moving in Craneware's favour. Most recently, Medicare and Medicaid announced new measures requiring every US state to have a recovery audit contractor in place by 2010, who will have the power to audit hospital claims for errors back to October 2007, making Craneware's software an increasingly attractive prospect.
Meanwhile, the company also said that it had launched the first offerings in two new product families - Patient Charge Estimator and Pharmacy ChargeLink.
Shares in Craneware, which employs the bulk of its 100-plus staff in Livingston and was founded in 1999 by Keith Neilson and Gordon Craig, yesterday climbed 5.3%, or 11p, to 219p.
Neilson, the company's chief executive, said: "Our high level of visibility over $18.3m of revenue at the beginning of the year has been augmented by a strong pipeline of new sales opportunities, as a result of which we expect to exceed our expectations for the full year."
The firm also named Craig Preston as its new finance director and announced a dividend of 3.1p per share.
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