Bluedrop Performance Learning, the St. John’s-based training software company, has been ramping up revenues at its new learning networks division, while reducing administrative costs following a major acquisition last year.

Now CEO Emad Rizkalla is hoping investors notice an improvement when the company releases its financial statements for the second fiscal quarter, which ended March 31.

“This will be the first quarter where you can look at the numbers and say this should be a public company,” said Rizkalla in an interview last week. He had a relaxed air, sitting in a meeting room in the company’s stylish headquarters, a renovated century-old meat-packing plant in downtown St. John’s.

The 10-year-old company has been busy the last two years. It listed its shares on the Toronto Venture Exchange in 2012 via the acquisition of a listed company. Last November, it bought the 30-year-old competitor, Atlantis Systems Corp. of Halifax, for $1 million in cash.

Bluedrop is best known for providing training software for the military and aerospace industry, but in the past few years it has been growing a division called Bluedrop Learning Networks, which provides workforce training for small and medium-sized enterprises, or SMEs. It booked its first sale in 2011 and last year logged $3.5 million in sales.

Rizkalla said Bluedrop is now benefiting from the dual forces of the Learning Networks ramping up sales, and the restructuring work winding down in the Atlantis acquisition. In the first quarter, the acquisition and restructuring costs added $1.48 million to the company’s costs, which contributed to a pre-tax loss of $2.75 million. Revenues in the quarter were $2.04 million, down 19 per cent from the same period a year earlier.

The company has reduced duplication in Atlantis’s administrative and sales teams, while keeping its development workforce, said Rizkalla. And the employees who have been retained have found it reinvigorating to be part of a young, growing company. Bluedrop now has about 200 employees.

He’s bullish about the long-term outlook for the company in both of its main business divisions. The military and aerospace unit could be kept busy for years just in Canada, he said, due to programs such as the shipbuilding contract in Halifax.

In the Learning Networks division, Bluedrop is counting on opportunities as governments in both Canada and the U.S. develop programs for SMEs. The governments are demanding more training in such areas as improving productivity, leadership skills and computers science, but there are few educational resources available to teach these programs.

“We think that’s going to have significant legs because there’s billions being spent on both sides of the border,” said Rizkalla.

He noted that the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development recently noted that 68 per cent of the Canadian workforce is now either under-qualified or overqualified for their current position. Canada produced the worst results in the OECD in the survey, said Rizkalla, and speaks to the drastic need for workforce training in the country.

Bluedrop’s shares have been trading near the bottom of their one-year range of nine to 18 cents. They closed Monday at 9.5 cents. The company now has a market capitalization of just under $11 million, and about 80 per cent of the stock is held by the management.