New business wins have put the spotlight on distributed denial of service (DDoS) cyber-attack defender Corero Network Security (CNS:AIM). We see that as vindication of management’s SmartWall threat defence system strategy.

The £46.3 million company has been pushing SmartWall since February 2014 but it took the best part of 18 months to gain traction.

On 23 May 2016, Corero announced its first SmartWall order from a top 10 US mobile network operator. Worth around $300,000, the contract alone is not hugely meaningful but it represents the latest in a long list of ‘firsts’.

On 6 January the company won its first contract with a major Tier-1 internet service provider (ISP) in Europe. This came hot on the heels of several contracts won during the second half of 2015, including a similar deal with an internet hosting supplier in the US and with an unnamed FTSE 100 company.

The pace of new business being won has accelerated further since January 2016. The following month Corero unveiled its first ‘significant’ contract with a European regional ISP; then on 4 April came the company’s maiden order from a European data hosting provider. Later in April, Corero announced its first ISP order in Germany.

All of these contract wins are multi-year and are valued at between $200,000 and $700,000, depending on the scale and scope.

Corero is beginning to show its potential can be converted into meaningful new business, revenues, and presumably in time, profit. On this basis we now take a more positive view of the shares at 22.75p.