(Alliance News) - LoopUp Group PLC on Thursday posted a substantially narrowed loss in the first half of 2023 as it recorded a sharp rise in revenue.

Shares in the firm surged 56% to 3.35 pence on Thursday morning in London.

The company reported a pretax loss of GBP1.6 million in the first half of 2023, narrowed significantly from a loss of GBP7.1 million the year prior.

The improved loss came as LoopUp's half-year revenue jumped 85% to GBP12.2 million from GBP6.6 million the previous year.

London-based LoopUp is a cloud platform for premium hybrid communications. On Thursday it said its primary Cloud Telephony business had seen continued "strong" growth during the half-year, noting triple-digit growth, in customers, contracts and revenue.

"Cloud Telephony now sits squarely at the heart of the Group's forward-looking growth strategy, and we achieved further strong operational progress and commercial traction during [the first half of the year]," LoopUp said.

Meanwhile, the company's Meetings and Events businesses remained "structurally in decline" in the first half of the year. LoopUp said this was primarily due to customers switching to broader unified communications platforms such as Microsoft Teams that include similar features and capabilities.

Nonetheless, LoopUp said it remains confident of "broadly meeting" current market expectations for 2023 thanks to the accelerating growth of its Cloud Telephony business.

LoopUp did not specify these market expectations.

By Heather Rydings, Alliance News senior economics reporter

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