Blue Prism to buy Thoughtonomy for up to £80m; posts rise in H1 revenue

Blue Prism said on Wednesday that it has agreed to buy cloud services company Thoughtonomy for up to £80m as it posted an 82% rise in first-half revenue.

Thoughtonomy is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) based product and cloud services business that combines Blue Prism's robotic process automation (RPA) platform alongside additional embedded and integrated artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud capabilities.

Blue Prism's chief executive officer Alastair Bathgate said the deal provides the company "with a turnkey SaaS product which combines the power of the connected-RPA with a fully integrated suite of premium quality AI and RPA capabilities, on demand".

He said: "The product is available to customers without the overhead of setting up a dedicated infrastructure and as a result is ideal in serving the mid-tier of the market. We believe that the cloud will grow in importance across our enterprise customer base, and this acquisition will also help further our development of enterprise-based cloud products."

Blue Prism expects the financial contribution from Thoughtonomy in the remaining three months of its financial year to increase revenues by up to £3m and increase core earnings losses by up to £2m.

"Looking beyond 2019, the board expects that the full integration of Thoughtonomy into the group's business model and distribution network will drive an increased performance in revenue," it said.

Also on Wednesday, the AIM-listed company said revenue jumped to £41.6m in the six months to 30 April 2019 from £22.9m in the first half of 2018. However, its adjusted core losses widened to £34m from £4.2m as it made investments in sales and marketing.

At 1000 BST, the shares were down 8.6% at 1,602p.