The Irish internet security company Baltimore Technologies, said yesterday that a surge in sales is likely to help move it into profit earlier than expected.
For the second successive quarter, results from the Dublin-based firm beat market expectations and forced analysts to revise their forecasts. Chief executive Fran Rooney said good sales outside the European market was driving the growth.
"We're very happy in that sales in all our markets are growing very fast but we've been surprised by the speed of our progress internationally," he said. "A few months ago we would have predicted that our sales split would roughly be 40% in Europe, 40% in US and 20% in Asia, but now I'd say it'll be more like 35%, 35% and 30%."
Europe now accounts for 40% of sales, with the US contributing 26% and Asia Pacific 34%.
Revenues for the three months to June 30 were 22% higher than the previous year at £16.3m, and 70% up on the previous quarter. Losses widened year on year from £9m to £13.4m, but Baltimore insiders indicated that losses had probably peaked by now and would go down in the next quarter.
Analysts believe that the company will break even by the first quarter of 2002, but are raising their revenue forecasts for this financial year by around 10% to £66m.
Shares in Baltimore, which were ejected from the FTSE 100 index at the last quarterly review following the downturn in the value of technology stocks, climbed 47p to 694p.
Recent acquisitions in Japan and the US are already making a healthy contribution to group revenues, and Balti more was actively considering other deals, said Mr Rooney.
"We will continue to keep an eye on our own industry for potential consolidation candidates," he said, adding that Baltimore was particularly interested in increasing its presence in the healthcare, payments systems and electrical appliance markets.
"We look at targets based on three criteria: market access, technology access and industry consolidation," he said.
Mr Rooney refused to say which companies he was targeting but analysts said that if Baltimore's share price remained resilient it could go for a merger with one of its largest US rivals.
They said one possible target is Entrust Technologies in the US, which last month saw its shares plunge more than 50% after warning that second-quarter earnings will be much lower than expected. It is valued at around $1.5bn (£1bn).
