ENTERPRISE technology company Silverlake Axis : 5CP 0% on Wednesday (Nov 15) posted a 15 per cent fall in its earnings for the first quarter of FY2024, on the back of flat revenue and higher operating costs.

The company’s net profit for the three months ended September stood at RM48.9 million (S$14.1 million) down from RM57.6 million a year earlier. On a per-share basis, its earnings fell to 1.93 sen, from 2.28 sen previously.

Silverlake’s revenue for the quarter was flat, inching up 1 per cent to RM189.2 million, on the absence of a large software-licensing transaction from a client in Indonesia, recognised in the year-ago period.

There were some bright spots. Almost a fifth of its Q1 topline came from cloud computing, where revenue more than doubled to RM35.8 million.

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) revenue likewise increased 45 per cent to RM18.9 million.

However, Silverlake’s operating expenses were up 13 per cent to RM57.9 million.

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The company had added 60 new staff over the past year to its payroll to cover new markets.

It also had IT-related expenses, costs in laptop leasing for new headcount and business travel expenses with the post-pandemic travel resumption.

Silverlake plans to work with partners to “aggressively” expand its market presence in the Middle East, Africa and India.

It is bullish about its cloud-native digital banking product Mobius, which it believes is on track to be adopted by more banks.

“We observe a stable sales environment throughout FY2024 with positive pipeline development and progress made on large deals, and two new logo signings in the first quarter,” the company also pointed out.

It added that its investments in SaaS and cloud are reaping benefits.

It is set to launch new product features in the upcoming year.

Shares of Silverlake closed at S$0.285, up S$0.01 or 3.6 per cent, on Wednesday.