The Novian software and IT infrastructure services group had aggregated revenue of EUR 14.5 million in the first half of this year, or 25.5% more than in the same period of 2021. The group’s EBITDA in the reporting period was EUR 0.16 million and contracted 81.7% year-on-year. There was an operating loss of EUR 0.34 million, versus an operating profit of EUR 0.46 million in the same period last year.
In the first 6 months of 2022, Novian group companies earned EUR 11 million of their revenue, or 76%, in Lithuania; the amount is 58.5% more than in the same period of 2021. Revenue earned abroad was EUR 3.5 million, or 24.3% less than a year earlier. The companies had activities in a total of 32 countries, compared to 34 countries last year.
“On the Lithuanian market, we’re continuing software development work on national systems, and we feel an increased need for IT equipment. In other countries, we’re working in the fields of space, aviation and defence and starting new projects. While in recent years those projects have proceeded more slowly due to the pandemic, we expect they’ll return to the earlier pace. We are playing an active role in the deployment of high-performance computing – HPC – solutions,” Novian CEO Evaldas Rėkus said.
The financial results for the reporting period were influence by higher wage costs for IT professionals in recent times, thus new contracts have taken the labour market changes into account. “We believe that these changes and the groundwork done in foreign markets will have a positive impact on results,” said Rėkus. Novian companies have also invested in new projects, like the Novian group digitization centre which has begun operating in Estonia.
HPC clusters are being deployed in Southern Africa and Bangladesh
Novian’s companies in the technology area had EUR 10.5 million of revenue in the first half of 2022, or 39.9% more than in the first half of last year. The companies’ operating profit fell 56.4% to EUR 0.2 million. The group companies working in the technologies area are Novian Technologies in Lithuania, Novian Eesti in Estonia (was “Andmevara Services” until June this year), and Andmevara SRL in Moldova.
“Revenue growth was due to stable operations in Lithuania, where we renewed sizeable contracts with major shopping centres in the country and are engaged in public sector projects. Recovery in African and Asian markets, where we are actively promoting our services and have begun new HPC projects, make us optimistic about business growth,” said Gytis Umantas, the CEO of Novian Technologies and Novian Eesti.
He noted that HPC solutions are highly relevant for climate change-related projects, as they enable intensive processing of large amounts of data, faster and more accurate computations, and a wider breadth and depth of data analysis. “Our uniqueness in this area is experience implementing such projects not only in Lithuania, but also in over a dozen foreign countries,” the CEO said.
Currently Novian Technologies is deploying an HPC cluster at Botswana’s Meteorological Centre for use in modelling climate change and forecasting weather. As part of the project, HPC clusters will be deployed in 17 other countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) as well. The company will also install HPC clusters for the Bangladesh Meteorological Department to aid climate-change modelling and weather forecasting.
According to Umantas, digitalization is driving a need for organisations to mobilize data more actively, a process that often unavoidably requires the digitization and segmentation of documents. Those are services the new digitization centre in Estonia will provide. The centre’s five different types of scanners make it possible to digitize not only the archives of libraries and publications, but also certain cadastral documents.
National, space and defence projects are ongoing
The Novian software services companies Novian Systems, Elsis PRO and Andmevara had EUR 3.6 million of revenue in the first half of this year, or 0.6% more than in the same period of 2021. These companies had an operating loss of EUR 0.4 million; in the first half last year they had an operating profit of EUR 0.04 million.
“We are continuing work on large and ongoing projects, which include the development of Lithuania’s new national public procurement information system, known as “Saulė”, the development of an information system to enable the exchange of e-prescriptions and e-documents on dispensing medicinal products between Lithuania and other
European Union countries, and work on the country’s integrated tax information system,” said Evaldas Rėkus, who is the CEO of Novian Systems and a member of the board of Elsis PRO.
Elsis PRO remains active in defence, space and aviation. The company is taking part in projects of the European Defence Industrial Development Programme (EDIDP). In the framework of a project of the European Space Agency, it is developing the “Galaxy” nanosatellite communication software. And in aviation, it successfully developed the “SHIFT” software for scheduling the work of air traffic controllers and is actively working with the potential market.
Zissor has digitized publications
The Norwegian company Zissor, a provider of media monitoring software and digitization services, had revenue of EUR 0.4 million in the first half of this year, 14% less than a year earlier. Zissor had a first-half operating loss of EUR 0.03 million; in the same period last year, it had an operating profit of EUR 0.1 million.
Zissor continued to focus on expanding archive digitization services in the Nordic countries, particularly Finland. The company introduced a PDF-to-XML conversion service in the Nordics and Europe. Moreover, Zissor Media System software is being enhanced with a new artificial intelligence module for categorizing articles and a new PDF text and image extraction module.
Noteworthy among projects carried out are the digitization of the Finnish newspaper Iltalehti’s archive for 1980-2013, the Norwegian newspaper Hordaland Folkeblad’s archive for 1873-2005, and other publications. These projects including scanning, optical character recognition (OCR), article segmentation and meta-data creation.
The Novian group operates in three business areas. Working in the technologies area are Novian Technologies in Lithuania, Novian Eesti OU of Estonia and Andmevara SRL of Moldova. Working in the software services area are Novian Systems and Elsis PRO in Lithuania and Andmevara AS in Estonia. Working in the media monitoring and digitization area is the Norwegian company Zissor. The Novian group is owned by INVL Technology, a company that invests in IT businesses.
