Itway S.p.A. ("Itway" or the "Company"), a leading operational group in the IT, Cyber Security & Resiliency, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Big Data sectors, listed on the Mercato Telematico Azionario, organized and managed by Borsa Italiana S.p.A., announces that its subsidiary 4Science S.p.A., which is consolidated in Itway's financial statements and specialized in the Big Data market, Digital Repositories, and Data Management Systems, has approved the Semi-Annual Report as of June 30, 2023.
In the six-month period ended June 30, 2023, total revenues increased by +37%, with product and service revenues growing by +34% compared to the same period in 2022, while general costs recorded a 40% increase. EBITDA amounts to 122 thousand Euros, EBIT shows a decrease of approximately 95 thousand Euros, and the net result for the period registers a decline of 81 thousand Euros.
The increase in costs is mainly related to ongoing investments and, in particular, is linked to the growth in personnel costs (+279 thousand Euros), which goes from 27 employees (June 30, 2022) to 37 employees (June 30, 2023) and is related to the hiring of qualified personnel with an increase of 10 employees among salespeople, project managers, developers, service desk analysts, system administrators, and back office staff, as planned by the company's investment plans.
The recruitment and training of new resources to such an extent have inevitably led to a phase of initial lower internal efficiency in revenue generation capacity, given the absorption of senior resources in training and knowledge transfer to new hires.
This phase of lower efficiency and production capacity will improve during the second half of 2023. 4Science continued its growth trend in the first half of 2023, with a 117% increase in orders compared to the first half of 2022, reaching a value of orders of over 1.2 million Euros.
This significant amount of orders also includes the first contracts that the company has won through its US operations, just one year after the opening of American 4Science Corporation on July 5, 2022. The semester saw the entry of new prestigious clients, including the University of Cambridge and Imperial College London in the United Kingdom, respectively ranked number 2 and number 6 in the QS World University Rankings 2023.
The California Digital Library, serving the University of California (UC), also awarded 4Science an important software development contract for the open-source community, another opportunity for growth for the company and its solutions and products. Furthermore, contracts were closed with the COAR consortium (Confederation of Open Access Repositories), with the University of Basel and the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland.
Many other existing long-standing clients have also confirmed their trust in 4Science for the continuation of their research data management projects, including the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore (ranked 19th in the QS Rankings), the University of Bern, and the prestigious Fraunhofer Society, Europe's most important applied research institution.
The Italian market's development is also noteworthy, with the acquisition of a contract with Trentino Digitale for the implementation of a Digital Asset Management (DAM), delivered in cloud - SaaS mode and based on the open-source software Dspace GLAM, in order to manage the digital assets of the Superintendence of the Autonomous Province of Trento and affiliated entities (War Museum, Municipal Library of Rovereto, Municipal Library of Trento).
"We are very satisfied with the results achieved by our subsidiary 4Science in this first semester of the year, obtained both thanks to the company's capabilities and its people, and due to the positive external factors that 4Science can leverage as part of the Itway Group," comments G. Andrea Farina, President and CEO of Itway.
"The increase in turnover and orders, the increase in resources with complementary skills, the doubling of orders, the confirmation of interest from existing clients, and the entry of new prestigious clients whose excellence is recognized worldwide confirm that we are heading in the right direction.
In addition to all this, the ongoing investments as planned and the availability of significant cash that can be used to finance growth are all elements that reassure us and give us hope for the achievement of the economic objectives that we have set for 4Science for this fiscal year."
(NEWS Traderlink)