One-off charge puts Trinitech in red

PAYMENTS software group Trintech made a loss of $3.7 million (€3.02m) in the second quarter of the year.

The company said the loss was because of a one-off $3.9m (€3.1m) charge to extend the warranty of products it sold to customers in Europe.

Shares in Trintech slipped less than 1% on the Nasdaq market early yesterday following the release of the results. The company had already warned investors of the exceptional charge earlier this month.

The company’s president, Paul Byrne, said: “Trintech’s second quarter results were impacted negatively by the once-off provision relating to the extension of warranty periods for certain hardware products deployed in Europe.

“Trintech will work closely with its customers and incur repair and rework costs with a view to resolving certain technical difficulties currently being experienced with these products.”

The company said excluding the charge, it made a profit of $225,000 (€183,365) for the quarter. The loss per share for the quarter amounted to 24 cents. Revenues for the three months to end July were $12.6m (€10.2m), some $400,000 below the figure recorded a year ago.

Earlier this month, Trinitech announced that sluggish sales of Chip & PIN technology - designed to make credit card transactions more secure - were behind the fall. Product revenue, which includes sales of Chip & PIN devices, dropped 35% from a year ago to $2.8m (€2.2m). Licence revenues increased by 8% to $5.9m (€4.8m) and service revenues were up 13% to $3.9m (€3.2m).

Mr Byrne added: “We remain focused on addressing the current technical difficulties within the Payments business. We continue to seek expansion opportunities in software and services to grow Trintech’s market share and profitability.”

The company said it was also looking at a number of acquisition opportunities. For the six months to end July, the company made a loss of $3.2m (€2.6m) on revenues of $25.7m (€20.9m).