REG - Actual Experience - Trading Statement

Actual ExperienceAnnouncement

15/12/2022 07:00

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RNS Number : 7581J  Actual Experience PLC  15 December 2022

15 December 2022

Actual Experience plc

(the "Company" or "Actual Experience" or "Actual")

 

Trading and Commercial Update

 

Actual Experience (AIM: ACT), the analytics-as-a-service company, is pleased
to announce an update on trading for the financial year ended 30 September
2022, as well as recent progress regarding important commercial initiatives.

Trading Update

As reported in both the Company's Interim Results and September Placing
announcement, Actual has been putting in place the people and technology
components required to claim a leading position in the emerging market for
Human Experience Management (HX). Our focus remains on enabling our customers
to optimise their digital ecosystem to increase productivity and enhance
employee wellbeing. As previously communicated, the financial year ended 30
September 2022 was therefore a period of transition as the Company laid the
groundwork for its new market focus and it is our belief that the Company is
now in a strong position to capitalise on the significant market opportunity
that exists.

Revenue for the year ended 30 September 2022 was generated entirely from
legacy sales engagements and amounted to £1.2m (2021: £1.7m); as previously
announced, this decrease is attributable to legacy contracts that were not
renewed during the year.

We remain focused on expanding our sales prospect pipeline and, in particular,
generating orders from our more advanced opportunities. Feedback from
partners and enterprises for our newly launched Digital Workplace Management
Platform ("DWMP") continues to be very positive, and such is the importance of
employee productivity and welfare we are able to engage with heads of
transformation and C-Suite executives at an early stage in the sales cycle.
Increasingly, commentators such as Gartner and Forrester suggest that 2023
will be the year when organisations prioritise investment in technologies that
improve their hybrid digital infrastructure.

During the year, significant cost reductions, relative to the peak level of
spending earlier in the year, amounting to approximately a third of peak
monthly spending (savings of £0.2m per month) were achieved through reduced
headcount and other operational initiatives. This will benefit the new
financial year that commenced 1 October 2022 by lowering the Company's cash
burn and break even point.

Net cash at 30 September 2022 was £2.9m (30 September 2021: £8.2m).
Following the fund raise completed in October 2022 which raised net proceeds
of £2.8m, Actual Experience retains a solid financial position, with net cash
of £5.0m at 31 October 2022. This reflects slightly higher than normal
expenditure in October.

Actual intends to announce its full year results in late January 2023, at
which time the Company will provide a further update on current trading.

Digital Workplace Management Platform

In August 2022, the Company completed the initial scale deployment of the DWMP
with an existing customer and then proceeded to ongoing live service in
October 2022. The platform has proven to work reliably at scale in this large
deployment and is already providing a wealth of actionable information
regarding opportunities to derive digital workplace efficiencies. This has
resulted in strongly positive customer feedback.

Partner Programme Update

We are pleased with the on-going support and continuing commitment of our
commercial channel partners Verizon and Vodafone, both of whom are actively
promoting DWMP to their customer base. Most of the sales leads currently being
pursued by Actual are being generated in this way.

Actual is actively seeking new partner relationships with leading technology
and consulting companies. Several of these projects are well advanced and the
Board expects to announce new partners in due course.

In particular, the Company is pleased with its recent progress with LACE
Partners, a specialist HR consultancy with a 'Big Four' heritage. Together
with LACE, Actual is actively pursuing several opportunities with LACE's large
global clients.

LACE Managing Director and Co-founder Cathy Acratopulo commented

"Talent attraction, hybrid working, and the employee value proposition (EVP)
are deeply interwoven future of work themes and dominate HR's 2023 agenda.

There is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform the EVP and workplace
technology. CPO and CIO must come together to make this transformation a
success, but this has to be a human-centric, data-driven process. CPO's have
an opportunity to embrace data and lead their business through systemic,
quantifiable improvements in employee retention and productivity. Equally,
CIO's have an opportunity to embrace new data and deliver more directly than
ever to top-level business objectives This is why we have decided to partner
with Actual, whose insights into the human experience of the digital workplace
uniquely bridge the gap between technology and employee experience and
productivity, and create a new, actionable common language for CPO and CIO. We
are delighted with the response we have seen from our clients to Actual's
offering."

CEO Recruitment Process

The Company continues to work with an executive recruiter to evaluate external
and internal candidates. This process is close to completion and a further
announcement  is expected to be made early next year. Until this time, Steve
Bennetts remains as Interim CEO (in addition to his CFO duties), and Kirsten
English continues to act as Executive Chair.

 

Kirsten English, Executive Chair of Actual Experience plc, commented:

"There has been continuing momentum and clear progress achieved in recent
months driven by our new leadership team and a stronger commercial focus. In
particular, it is encouraging to see the uniformly positive reaction from both
Partners and enterprise prospects to our newly-launched DWMP.

The measures that we have put in place over the last year have resulted in the
Company being well placed to respond to the strong emerging enterprise demand
for HX solutions to improve digital productivity and employee wellbeing in the
Hybrid Working environment. We look forward to updating shareholders as 2023
progresses."

 

 

Enquiries:

 

 Actual Experience plc                                     Tel: +44 (0)203 128 8170

 Steve Bennetts, Interim CEO and Chief Financial Officer

 Singer Capital Markets Advisory LLP                       Tel: +44 (0)207 496 3000

 Shaun Dobson

 James Fischer

 Turner Pope Investments (TPI) Ltd                         Tel: +44 (0)203 657 0050

 James Pope

 Andy Thacker

 MHP Communications                                        Tel: +44 (0)203 128 8170

 Reg Hoare                                                 act@mhpc.com (mailto:act@mhpc.com)

 Matthew Taylor

About Actual Experience

Actual Experience's goal is to make the digital world work for everyone,
everywhere, all of the time. As the working world evolves post-pandemic, the
global shift to a flexible hybrid model has brought with it a significant
challenge; how do businesses create an environment that gives their people
what they need to thrive, whilst protecting the commercial efficiency of the
business and driving growth at the same time?

By underpinning their strategic decision making with our data-driven insights,
our customers gain the clarity and confidence needed to build sustainable
digital ecosystems within their organisations - delivering both a great
employee experience and increasing the efficiency of the digital workplace.
Powered by over 10 years of academic Human Experience research, our Digital
Workplace Management System doesn't need any interaction with employees to
provide a unique and highly actionable dataset that People, Technology and
Finance leaders can rely upon to plan impactful projects against their most
critical agenda items including wellbeing, profitability, DE&I and ESG
initiatives.

Actual Experience is listed on the London Stock Exchange (AIM: ACT). Our
corporate headquarters are in Bath, UK. Actual Experience's unique and
patented digital analytics-as-a-service is founded on cutting-edge research
from Queen Mary University of London.

 

For further information please visit www.actual-experience.com
(http://www.actual-experience.com/)

 

 

 

 

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