However, executives were pleased with overall performance with roughly $102 million in revenue up 8 percent over last year's corresponding period. After-tax profit was about $6.4 million, up about 1.3 percent over a year ago. Chargeable hours dropped to 54 percent in the recently ended half from 58 percent a year ago "primarily due to a decrease in chargeable hours in the US SMB business" Columbus said It referred to an SMB revenue loss of roughly $634,000 of "which had a negative impact on service EBITDA in the first half." "The SMB business will normalize," CEO Thomas Honoré said. U.S. revenue, most of the North American total, of about $37.3 million was 12.8 percent higher than a year earlier. But the operations on this continent lost approximately $1.2 million, against after tax profit of $341,000 in the first half of 2016. The improvement came largely from acquisitions, including the January purchase of Tridea Partners, for about $9.6 million. North American revenue of about $37 million for the first half was 11 percent higher than a year ago. The biggest chunk of revenue was the roughly $23.8 million from services, a 22.3-percent increase. Both North American license and subscription revenue from sale of Columbus software products fell. License revenue fell 74 percent to approximately $82,000. Columbus subscription software sales of roughly $391,000 was off 10.7 percent. External license income—which includes Microsoft—fell to about $3.3 million, a drop of 22 percent. External subscription revenue rose 9.6 percent to about $9.4 million.