Harvest Technology plc is expecting to achieve total consolidated revenue of around €20.4 million in 2023, a 25 per cent increase over the €16.3 million registered in 2022.

In a company announcement posted to the Malta Stock Exchange, Harvest Technology plc touched on the various projects that will come to fruition over the coming months and provided an update on its business performance outlook for the current financial year, coming to a close on 31st December 2023.

Harvest Technology plc is a publicly traded company with a majority shareholding retained by Hili Ventures Ltd.

Subsidiaries include enterprise IT company PTL Ltd, payment solutions provider APCO Systems Ltd, and security solutions provider APCO Ltd.

In the market update, Harvest Technology plc noted that the Group has undertaken “significant investment” to upgrade its payment gateway ApcoPay’s system to a cloud-based gateway, saying this would “allow the business to scale and, more importantly, offer new features and products which are required by clients particularly in the iGaming sector”.

The development of the new gateway has proven “highly demanding”, said the company, explaining that it requires “operating and maintaining both payment gateways in parallel”.

“This project inevitably resulted in significant additional labour resources and operating costs.”

The new gateway is scheduled to be operational as from Q3 2023, and the target is that by end of 2023, ApcoPay’s existing clients will be migrated to the new cloud-based gateway.

In this segment, the Group said it anticipates “a slight increase in revenue compared to the previous year, primarily due to the renewal of a contract for payment and gateway provision services with the Government of Malta”.

However, despite the growth in revenue, profitability is expected to be lower due to the additional investment in the platform, as well as the ongoing investment in a marketing drive focused on enhancing brand presence and promoting this new product.

Meanwhile, the Retail and IT Services segment is projected to achieve better revenue performance compared to the previous year.

Key highlights in this regard include the delivery of a tender for the supply and maintenance of an unmanned aerial vehicle for the Maltese public sector by APCO Ltd and the implementation of various banking solutions for local banks in Malta by PTL Ltd.

PTL Ltd will also continue its international IT services business expansion.

The Group is coming off a “challenging” year, with 2022 seeing pre-tax profits fall to almost half what was registered in 2021 (2022: €2.1 million; 2021: €4 million), largely on the back of a steep increase in cost of sales.