Ansys shares soar on debut

By Leon Engelbrecht, ITWeb senior writer

Johannesburg, 08 Jun 2007

Ansys MD Allan Holloway this morning expressed satisfaction with his company's debut on the JSE Securities Exchange's AltX index yesterday. "We were pleased at the level of trading," he says.

"It [the share price] ended at R1.43, but went up today. It is going well. The press took it as well and stockbrokers consider it a buy," he says. Four million shares traded hands, Holloway added. The share debuted at R1 on Thursday morning and reached a high of R1.50 before sliding back and closing at R1.43. It opened higher on Friday morning.

A private placement before the listing raised R30 million, Holloway says. He will now take a short break, after which he'll be putting the money raised to good use. "I'll take the cash investors entrusted to us to make more cash," he jokes. "Acquisitions are a serious and difficult business, and I'll start on that on my return."

Ansys entered the market with good business and financial prospects. Earlier this week, the company sold a seventh electronic wheel profile monitoring system to Spoornet for R11.7 million.

Electronic wheel profile monitoring systems allow the wear-and-tear on rail carriage bogey wheels to be measured remotely as the train passes the installation, so that preventative maintenance procedures can be followed, if required. Ansys has sourced the know-how from MRX Technologies in Perth, Australia.

Holloway said the deal means the company's orders in hand for delivery this financial year are now already at 85% of forecast. The company projects revenue of R121.3 million and profit of R18.4 million for 2008. Turnover for the year ended February 2007 was R78.8 million, translating into an after-tax profit of R12 million.