Bottomline Technologies posts $10.5 million quarterly loss

Loss is $6 million more than 2015

Bottomline Technologies posted a net loss of $10.5 million, or 28 cents a share, in the first quarter ending Sept. 30, compared to a $4.3 million loss in the same quarter of fiscal 2015, according to official financial statement filed on Tuesday.

Revenues at the Portsmouth-based financial services technology firm were flat at $83 million, partially due to currency headwinds created somewhat by the Brexit vote, the company said. Without that, revenue would have been $91 million, said Robert Eberle, Bottomline’s CEO, in a call with investors after initial earnings were released last week.

Subscription and transaction sales – which include cloud-based services – grew 16 percent, to $52 million. Such sales now constitute nearly two-thirds of the company’s revenue.

“Driving subscription and transaction revenue growth has been a key objective of our strategic plan and product investment, and it is clearly working,” said Eberle, according to a transcript on the website Seeking Alpha.

But that growth was offset by drops in software licensing and service and maintenance sales.

Eberle and other executives taking part in the conference call didn’t use the word “loss” in discussing the initial earnings release. Instead, they emphasized that the company earned $8.3 million in core income, just a million less than last year. Core income doesn’t count stock-based compensation, which was $8.2 million during the quarter, or the cost to implement the company’s global software ($2.5 million) or borrowing costs ($3.4 million).

Last fiscal year, the top five Bottomline executives alone received total compensation of nearly $10 million, almost all of that in stock awards. Eleven board members also received stock awards totaling more than $1 million.