Neural Technologies, the specialist fraud vendors who now position themselves as suppliers of risk management, has been listed amongst the top 100 fastest growing privately-owned British companies. See the press release here.
The news comes not long after Neural acquired mobile VAS provider Prime Creation Technology. How are these two stories to be interpreted? On one hand, profit growth has been strong over the last three years. On the other hand, why move into other sectors, and dilute your base, unless you think that is needed to sustain results? The idea that revenue-generating products are a good fit with leakage-preventing products is questionable. The best justification for leakage prevention is that there may be something wrong with the way revenues are being generated, and it is difficult to stay impartial when you sell products that could be used to check that some of your other products have been implemented correctly. We shall have to see if Neural’s strategy will enable it to continue to improve profits at the same impressive rate. Of course, strong growth followed by diversification can sometimes cause hiccups – just ask Subex.
