POWERLAN LIMITED STOCK EXCHANGE ANNOUNCEMENT

(ACN: 057 345 785)

30 August, 2001

ASX CODE: PWR

Perpetual Trustees Licences Powerlan's Portfolio Manager Investment Management System

One of Australia's most respected financial institutions, Perpetual Trustees Australia Limited, have signed an agreement to license Powerlan's flagship funds management software system, Portfolio Manager.

Business solutions provider Powerlan is now the second largest provider of investment systems (in terms of clients) in the Australian funds management software industry. Currently, Powerlan's Portfolio Manager clients manage over $AU30 billion in funds under management. 

Perpetual's Corporate Trust Division will utilise Portfolio Manager to administer a further $AU42.2 billion of securitised assets.

Powerlan's Portfolio Manager is now used by investment managers in Australia, Hong Kong and New Zealand with additional strong interest being shown in, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia. Powerlan on August 21 signed New Zealand's fifth biggest funds manager to use Portfolio Manager.

The Perpetual deal marks the continuing success of Powerlan's strategy of selling its own Intellectual Property from which the company now derives a significant component of its revenues.

Powerlan Managing Director Theo Baker said: "The Portfolio Manager marketing push is in line with Powerlan's business strategy of increasing the ownership and deployment of its intellectual property, whereby the company derives revenue from license fees and recurring income through transaction fees and maintenance charges".

Other Powerlan products including IMX financial services software, content management system Rapid Web Publisher, conversion software Office Converter, freight management system Freight/AMS, Videcom videoconferencing system and a host of others, continue to make significant contributions to the company's revenues.

The head of Powerlan's Banking and Finance Group, Thomas Ng said, Portfolio Manager continues to solidify its position in the market. "The Perpetual deal marks Portfolio Manager as a significant industry product and with a strong pipeline of prospective sales, we are looking forward to further increasing market share, both here and overseas," Mr Ng said.

The Perpetual and New Zealand adoption of Portfolio Manager follows Powerlan's announcement last month that it had further boosted its presence in the financial services software industry by the acquisition of Melbourne-based financial services software company, the IMX Software Group (IMX).  IMX is a currency exchange and travel funds software leader. The company has over 1,700 installations in branches of large multinational banks and foreign currency services.

About Portfolio Manager

Portfolio Manager is Powerlan's flagship investment management product. It is already widely adopted in many high profile financial institutions with total asset value of over $AU30 billion, before the Perpetual deal. Since signing Bankers Trust as its first client in the early 1990s, Portfolio Manager has been taken up by many major investment managers in Australia. Its diversified user base has grown to include JP Morgan, Alliance Capital, Milton Corporation, Sandhurst Trustees, State Trustees of Victoria, the Office of the Protective Commissioner and many more. Powerlan's successes in deploying Portfolio Manager have cut competitors' market share.

About Powerlan

Powerlan is a 1,200 person Australian IT Business Solution provider that boosts its customers' efficiency and profitability by applying its intellectual property, business consulting and analysis capabilities to companies' business technology infrastructures. With its size and wide skills repertoire, Powerlan delivers a full spectrum of end-to-end services and products.

Its services range from business consulting and analysis to application design, development, deployment and maintenance; infrastructure design and provision; project management; financing; training and IT recruitment. Powerlan caters for wireless and fixed solutions across multiple platforms including mainframe, midrange and Intel based systems.

Powerlan has developed a range of propriety products specific to banking and finance; data management; video-conferencing; freight forwarding; web-based distributed authoring and content management; asset management; mainframe, mid range and Intel-based connectivity products; conversion tools and many more.

Since listing on the ASX in 1999, Powerlan (PWR) has consistently delivered strong revenues and profits. Established in 1992, Sydney-headquartered Powerlan has 34 offices in eight countries and Australian capitals with about 35 per cent of revenue coming from its Asian arm.

Further information can be found at www.powerlan.com.au 
 

Copyright © 2003 Powerlan Ltd.