Beeks Financial Cloud shares surge as it signs two big new contracts

Financial cloud computing and connectivity provider Beeks Financial Cloud Group has secured two significant contracts, it announced on Friday, signing a $1m annualised contract with a global financial markets technology provider and a £1.1m contract over three years with a cloud-based payments solution provider.

The AIM-traded firm said it secured its first $1m annualised contract, with a global financial markets technology provider, explaining that it would provide the technology provider with a global deployment of private cloud infrastructure.

It said it would be the preferred cloud vendor for on-demand infrastructure provision globally, to complement the customer's existing secure, high-performance data and voice communications solutions delivered to the global financial markets.

The software-as-a-service (SaaS) based contract would begin in January, and was committed to grow to a run rate of $1m annually, with the potential for further expansion thereafter.

Looking at the second contract, Beeks said it signed a three-year contract with a cloud-based payments solution provider.

The contract was worth £1.1m over three years, with implementation due to be completed in the first half of the 2020 calendar year.

It said it was the first win for Beeks in the growing ‘open banking and payments’ sector, which the board said demonstrated the security of its offering, and applicability to the new segment of the financial markets.

Beeks said it would design and supply a private network and fully-managed infrastructure environment, enabling the payments provider to expand its secure and resilient end-to-end payments-as-a-service solution for financial institutions and regulated fintech organisations.

“We are delighted to be able to announce two such significant new customers,” said chief executive officer Gordon McArthur.

“Our selection as preferred vendor for one of the largest technology providers for financial markets globally represents our largest initial customer deployment to date and provides Beeks with a significant growth opportunity.

“The scalability of our network means that we are ideally placed to provide substantial cloud infrastructure setup across our locations internationally.”

McArthur said the company was also “delighted” to have been selected to support the expansion of the “innovator” in the payments sector.

“Regulation is driving the use of new technology, with the demand for increased level of security and expanding data volumes requiring banks and payments institutions to assess more flexible and secure cloud-based infrastructures over traditional IT architectures.

“Our global network and proven expertise mean Beeks is well-positioned to benefit from the expected growth in open banking and payment applications and we look forward to expanding this customer segment in the future.”

At 1526 GMT, shares in Beeks Financial Cloud Group were up 19.67% at 107.7p.