Prospects for Wynyard 'great if it hits targets'

Mark Lister, head of private wealth research at Craigs Investment Partners, said the couple of wins Wynyard had had were "highly impressive. Photo / David White

Analyst upbeat about the year ahead for Kiwi intelligence software developer.

Wynyard Group could continue to have a good year if it meets its forecasts, says one analyst.

Shares in the intelligence software developer rose 15.79 per cent yesterday after the company said it would meet a sales target of $21.5 million for 2013 on the back of an annual sales rise of more than 62 per cent.

Wynyard shares closed on $2.20 yesterday - an 85 per cent gain in share price since Monday last week.

Forsyth Barr senior equity analyst Blair Galpin said yesterday's news was a positive but its 2014 year would depend on how well the company continued to hit forecasts.

"As long as they can hit the numbers they have talked about, I think they will have a great year."

Wynyard was spun out of Jade Corporation ahead of its initial public offer in July last year.

Its offer document projected 2014 revenue of $27 million.

Galpin said Wynyard had a slow start on the sharemarket because it was such a new company with new products.

Since listing it had begun to announce a pipeline of contracts. Last week it added a deal with UAE money exchange GCC Exchange.

Galpin said the space Wynyard was playing in, big data and security, was tipped to be a hot area this year.

The recent share price growth was partly the company playing catch-up after barely moving before Christmas, he said. "It languished in 2013."

But he was surprised at how far its shares had moved and he expected the stock to "move around a bit".

Mark Lister, head of private wealth research at Craigs Investment Partners, said the couple of wins Wynyard had had were "highly impressive ... They've delivered on what they said they'd do, and that's always important for a new company".

In November, Wynyard brought forward recruitment of new sales and services staff to manage the next year's growth pipeline, adding between $1 million and $1.5 million to the forecast operating expenditure of $25 million for the 2013 calendar year.

Chief executive Craig Richardson said the number of new opportunities "materially increased" in the 2013 fourth quarter and "we took steps in November to build capacity to qualify and service this increased demand".

Wynyard will announce its full-year results on February 24.

- Additional reporting BusinessDesk