Getech’s vital role as it seals deals worth £1.7m

The firm, based in Roundhay, Leeds, revealed the deals with an unnamed ‘supermajor’ oil firm and a major regional player, both of which have signed up for its new Globe programme.

Getech designs and sells studies featuring complex magnetic, geological and geophysical data to help firms drill for oil and gas. It counts companies including Shell, BP and Exxon Mobil among its customers.

Getech, which is due to report a year of surging profits and revenues tomorrow, saw its shares gain 6p to 47.50p.

“These two new contracts are very substantial, being equivalent in terms of the contribution to Getech of more than 30 per cent of the entire revenue reported in 2011/12, and they will contribute strongly to our forward visibility of income,” said chief executive Raymond Wolfson.

“Importantly, they also indicate that Globe as a whole is relevant to a wide range of companies with global aspirations. We regard this as a very positive confirmation that the market for Globe and its related products will be substantial.”

Getech is forecast to report pre-tax profits of £1.1m for the year to the end of July, on revenues of £6.75m, according to house broker WH Ireland. The firm said it expects half the value of these two contracts to feed through this financial year, with the rest coming over the following two years.

The expanding regional oil firm bought a range of Getech products, including the core of the initial three-year Globe project, additional Globe products and regional reports.

Getech added the oil supermajor has also committed to sponsoring its core Globe product.

As a result it now has nine sponsors of its Globe programme, including independents, national, major and supermajor oil firms.

Globe is Getech’s global data programme, originally called Global Programmes, which provides firms with an overview of the whole planet.

“It provides a very good framework because you understand the globe or regional context, explorers can understand the areas around them and it helps them get a better feel for the area,” said Mr Wolfson.

“There are quite a lot of companies that have global aspirations and Globe will help them decide which regions they are going to be interested in.

“We’ve extended the scale and are putting more development work in – it’s now effectively a more comprehensive framework.”

Globe was launched in November last year, and won five customers by the end of July, with another four since.

“We’re very happy with that and I’m particularly pleased that we’re getting a range of size of companies interested,” said Mr Wolfson.

He added the company is seeing no sign of a let-up in demand for its products.

“The oil price is a little bit lower (but) we are still seeing a lot of interest and I don’t see any slowing down if I look at the pace of interest.”

WH Ireland analyst Eric Burns said recently that Globe is a “steady and visible revenue stream which, arguably, has been absent from the business model historically”.

He added: “Customers, who are typically the major global E&P (exploration and production) players, tend to buy in to Getech’s methodology, thus cementing the relationship and making them far stickier over the longer term.”

The data gatherer

Getech traces its roots back to the University of Leeds’ Department of Earth Sciences, now part of the School of Earth and Environment, when founder Derek Fairhead collected gravity data for Africa in 1986.

The data was computerised to complete Getech’s first study, and it gradually gathered the data of 19 companies.

It opened an office in Houston, Texas in 1996, and a limited company was formed in 2000 when Getech spun out of the university. It floated on the Alternative Investment Market in 2005, raising £3m.

Getech’s data spans the globe, from the oil-rich west coast of Africa to the largely untapped Arctic circle