Latvia-based information technologies (IT) company Exigen Services was acknowledged as the best Baltic IT company in terms of overall revenue and IT services-related revenue; Estonia’s Webmedia Group ranked second in the biannual report of Prime Investment, one of the leading investment banking companies in the Baltics.

Exigen revenues totaled EUR 9.882 million in the first half of this year, which though is 22.8% less as compared to the corresponding period of the previous year.

Exigen maintained its top position from the previous report, notwithstanding the decrease in revenues mainly due to the contraction of public sector projects, which account for significant part of the company’s income.

The company remains cautiously optimistic regarding future outlook because of new large-scale projects started in North America.

However, as pointed out by Exigen Services General Manager Baltics Guntis Urtans: “The situation in Latvian and Lithuanian IT markets, including public procurement, will still have significant impact on our positions”.

Estonian Webmedia which ranked second was the only company in Top 3 to show growth. Webmedia’s sales were driven by new product lines offered to European, Asian and African customers. Public Finance Management and eHealth product lines are expected to account for ever increasing portion of both revenue and EBITDA of the company in the near future.

Alna of Lithuania dropped to the place with revenues of EUR 7.096 million.

The top ten also comprised Microlink Eesti, Baltic Data Center, Lattelecom group, Santa Monica Networks Group, Blue Bridge, Helmes and Atea (in descending order).

Top performer in terms of growth is Nexum IT, a Latvian specialized software provider for insurance and banking industry, which successfully expanded in Scandinavian and Russian markets and enjoyed 24.9% sales growth.

Santa Monica Networks saw its IT services revenues grow by 24.8% due to a success of its newly presented SantaCare product range involving IT consulting, outsourcing and management.

Etronika also exhibited strong performance with 19.7% sales increase thanks to broadened spectrum of services provided to their traditional customers. Exigen Services, “Rix technologies” and “Atea” experienced steepest sales declines in the rating. “Atea’s” decline was in part due to sale of Lithuania-based firm “Sonex sistemos” to “Columbus IT” partner in 2008. Overall 11 companies in the rating had negative dynamics in IT service revenues and nine managed to maintain growth.

According to Prime Investment, Baltic IT companies experienced a 19.1% drop in total revenues in the first half of 2009. For the most part the contraction is attributed to decline in other revenues such as hardware and standard software sales which dropped by 40%, while IT services sector contracted at a much slower pace of four%. This implies that governments and companies still maintain the demand for servicing the existing IT infrastructure and for new tailored IT solutions despite the general trend to cut new IT infrastructure budgets. As a result, the proportion of IT service revenues reached 74%.

IT service revenues of Prime TOP-20 companies have declined by 4.7% in the first half of 2009 as compared to the same period in 2008. The total income of the rated companies decreased by 21%.

“Prime Investment” is one of the leading investment banking companies in the region, focusing on M&A, buyouts, fund raising, corporate restructuring and strategic advisory.