The Leeds-based firm, which has around 125 staff in the region, saw its revenue and profits increase in the six months ended January 31, 2022.

Revenue increased by 31 per cent to £29.2m, up from £22.2m in the same period last year. While pre-tax profit increased by 16 per cent to £1.3m, up from £1.1m the previous year.

Chris Barnes, CEO of Tracsis, told The Yorkshire Post that the firm’s traffic data and events business, which are both based in Yorkshire, had a “particularly tough period”.

“We worked really hard to make sure we protected jobs and core skills,” he said. “What’s really pleasing is we’ve seen that post-Covid bounceback.”

Tracsis won several multi-year rail technology software contracts including its first in the rail freight sector for TRACS Enterprise, as well as additional smart ticketing and delay repay contracts.

Increasing rail freight is likely to create more opportunities for the transport software provider.

Mr Barnes said: “What we’re seeing is they’ve got much more complexity in their operations because they are going to have to run to more of a defined schedule like passenger operators do. That’s therefore opening up interest in our products.

“There are a number of freight operators in the UK. It’s a smaller market than the market available to us for passengers but it’s a market that’s growing.

“One reason is [lorry] driver shortages and the other is the Amazon affect where people are needing to get more and more goods and services around the UK with the next day delivery style model.”

Tracsis acquired geoscience company Icon GEO. The deal adds earth observation capabilities to its data analytics, big data and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) business in Dublin.

Andy Kelly, chief financial officer at Tracsis, said: “What Icon does is it takes free to use satellite data and use that to map what’s going on on the surface of the earth.

“One of the things they do for example is they monitor crop usage in Ireland and the distribution of EU subsidies based on how farmers are using the land.”

He added: “Where we see opportunities is how you pair that into some of the stuff we do on the rail side of our business.

“For example, can we be more sophisticated at monitoring the effect of flooding, weather patterns, subsidence, land use, etc.”

Recently, Tracsis acquired RailComm, a US-based rail technology software and services provider, giving it direct access to the growing North American market

The business has cash balances of £25.1m with no debt, which the company says gives it the capability to carry out further acquisitions.

Mr Kelly said: “Mergers and acquisitions are a key part of our strategy. We’re always on the lookout, we’ve got a pipeline of future opportunities. Watch this space.”

The aim for the rest of the year is to focus on delivering the contracts that it has won and “continuing the momentum that sits behind a number of big new software product launches”, says Mr Barnes.

Retaining tech talent

The transport software company has “done quite well” in terms of retaining and attracting talent against a competitive backdrop in the tech recruitment market.

Chris Barnes said: “We deliberately made sure we kept hold of as many people as possible during the crisis. We lost very little in terms of skills and talent from the business.”

He added: “We are definitely recruiting people across a wider geography base now. It’s not that we’re now only recruiting in Leeds and people have to come into the Leeds office or the Manchester office.”

The firm has also launched its OneTracsis leadership development programme.

How Leeds-based transport software company Tracsis has bouncedback from Covid disruption