Feedback is in the enviable position of being a profit-making internet play with other strong technology businesses in more traditional markets. Recommended here last September at 61.5p, the shares rocketed as the market homed in on the potential for TekniCAL, in which the group holds a 50 per cent stake. But there is further to go.

In addition to its teaching capabilities - everything from video links and conferencing to live lectures - the virtual campus also handles back office student monitoring functions on-line.

TekniCAL is already delivering virtual campuses to nearly 150 sites around the world - most recently one to China. It is also talking to a number of African countries and the World Bank about an African internet university. But it is very early days, warns Feedback chief executive Roger Barnett.

'We are already involved in a lot of World Bank project business, but these are often quite protracted exercises', he adds. TekniCAL is also talking to a Middle Eastern country.

As well as schools and universities, internet-based training programmes for commercial and industrial businesses are a major prospecting ground. For example, TekniCAL is doing trial work for Amtrak, the US logistics group, converting its paper and disk-based human resources database to an internet format. It is also exploring the on-line health and safety training for Amtrak's 50,000 employees.

Using TekniCAL, 'banks will no longer have to send people away on week-long courses. They can do their training at their desks'. Barnett explains. 'What's more, the Government's initiatives to encourage small and medium-sized enterprises shows that all of us will be undertaking some sort of continuing education - all over the internet'.

Though Feedback's internet-based activities have grabbed the limelight, the group also has a strong, more traditional, technology base. Feedback Instruments exports equipment to 70 countries to teach the fundamentals of engineering and telecommunications at colleges of education. Exports are looking encouraging after being severely dented by the collapse in the Far Eastern economies which account for 25 per cent of sales.

The data business is particularly strong and Feedback is spreading its expertise into related fields, says Barnett. Three months ago, it launched a simple, self-contained terminal, operating with a smart card, which helps smaller companies comply with the EU's working hours directive. Initial response has been 'very encouraging'.

Access control, now in its third year, is providing a good income across the board from a wide spread of businesses, including supermarkets in Germany.

Brokers see Feedback making around £800,000 profits in the year to end-March - which would be worth about 4p of earnings. That could rise dramatically in the current year if the African virtual university comes to fruition. Though the shares are on a stiff rating of 40 times earnings, the TekniCAL potential leaves plenty to go for.