Irvine software maker Kofax PLC doubled profits for the six months through December and said it sees sales rising 14% in the first half of the year.
For the six months through December, Kofax posted $23 million in adjusted profits, up 188% from a year earlier.
Sales grew 20% to $122 million.
Kofax recorded “exceptional results,” Chief Executive Reynolds Bish said. “The performance in our software business exceeded our expectations.”
The company recorded some big customer wins last year, including Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of the Interior, Japan Tobacco International Inc., UBS AG and Iron Mountain Inc., among others.
Kofax makes scanning software used by businesses to get rid of paper and speed up productivity.
The software collects paper documents, forms, invoices, e-mails and photos, and organizes them into a searchable database of files.
Customers include government agencies, schools, banks and insurance companies, among others.
For the six months through June, Kofax projected a 14% rise in sales from a year earlier, according to Bish.
Still, he said he remains “cautiously optimistic.”
“We believe that the global economic environment continues to be fragile and the extent and sustainability of any recovery is still difficult to predict,” he said.
Last month, Kofax struck a deal to shed a lagging part of its business that distributed scanners and related devices—a holdover from the days when scanners were the latest and greatest technology.
Kofax is set to sell the division, which is run out of an office in southwest Germany, for about $23 million. German private equity firm Hannover Finanz GMBH is buying the business.
Hannover is set to own 80% of the business when the deal closes, which is expected in March. Managers now running the unit are set to own 20%.
The deal is expected to close next month.
