Leading enterprise content management company, Objective Corporation Limited today announced the acquisition of Limehouse Software Limited. Limehouse is a market leader in collaborative content creation, publishing and stakeholder consultation solutions for local government in the United Kingdom and has an emerging presence in North America.

Objective has acquired 100% of the issued capital of Limehouse for £3.18 m, with an additional performance-based earn-out of up to £1.42 m contingent on achieving FY2010 benchmark results.

Limehouse’s full year revenues to 30 June 2009 are expected to be in the range of £3 to £3.5m. The acquisition is expected to be earnings per share positive and will be funded from existing cash reserves and new facilities.

The acquisition extends Objective’s market share and capability in the Public Sector market, where its products help customers improve the efficiency of their operations and record keeping obligations. Limehouse has over 250 customers, including approximately 200 in the United Kingdom local government sector and over 35 in North America.

Tony Walls, CEO, Objective Corporation said: “The acquisition of Limehouse provides an excellent opportunity to accelerate Objective’s growth. It is in line with our long-term strategy of combining organic growth with strategic acquisitions to extend our geographic and vertical market leadership.

“Of further strategic importance, Limehouse has a proven and profitable software-as-a-service model, completely hosted in the cloud. This is the first of many solutions Objective will deliver via this model.

“I am delighted with the extended breadth of capability we can now offer our customers. The Limehouse solution extends our offering from process management and record keeping through to built for purpose applications that meet very specific needs of our target markets. Limehouse addresses the collaborative creation of print quality documents, increasing the speed and control of document creation and assembly, and dramatically reduces the cost of iterative design and publication, whether print or web based. Further, the solution addresses the management of stakeholder consultation and engagement, a legislative requirement for many Public Sector documents.

“Objective and Limehouse have proven experience in increasing Public Sector effectiveness, efficiency and transparency, helping governments to deliver better services to the community at a lower cost.
“We are delighted to welcome Limehouse customers and employees into our community.  We do not anticipate any employee redundancies,” said Mr Walls.

Giles Welch, CEO, Limehouse Software said: “We are very pleased to join forces with Objective. Having worked closely with Objective over the past 12 months, it is clear that our two businesses are synergistic and we look forward to continued growth as part of Objective. We are particularly impressed by Objective’s commitment to maintaining and investing in the business benefits our customers achieve from using our solution. 

“Limehouse customers will also benefit from the commercial substance that comes from a listed multinational company with over two decades of experience.”