REG - Vianet Group PLC - Strategic acquisition of trade and assets

VianetAnnouncement

15/05/2023 07:00

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RNS Number : 3388Z  Vianet Group PLC  15 May 2023

15 May 2023

Vianet Group plc

 

("Vianet" or the "Group")

 

Strategic acquisition of trade and assets

 

Vianet Group plc (AIM: VNET), the international provider of actionable data
and business insight through devices connected to its Internet of Things
platform ("IOT"), today announces that it has acquired the trade and assets of
Beverage Metrics Inc ("BMI"), a Denver, USA based provider of inventory
software solutions to the USA hospitality sector,  a wholly owned subsidiary
of Identec Group AG.

 

The acquisition consists of customers, an established operating platform,
software IP, patents for barcode 3D scanning and advanced technology for
point-of-sale data integration. BMI's five employees will be incorporated into
Vianet's USA subsidiary Vianet Americas Inc. ("VAI") which has worked closely
with BMI over the past couple of years.

 

The initial consideration payable to BMI is £577,500 and will be satisfied in
the form of the issue of 700,000 new ordinary Vianet shares at a price of
82.5p each with deferred consideration payable dependent on revenue
performance metrics. The deferred consideration is 7% of net revenue of VAI
for the period 01 April 2024 through 31 December 2028, payable in cash and
capped at a maximum of £4 million.

 

For the year ended 31 December 2022 the loss attributable to the acquired
trade and assets was approximately £0.76 million and the independent
valuation of the acquired trade and assets was approximately £1.22 million.

 

The combination of Vianet's SmartDraught draft beer management solution with
BMI's inventory platform provides a comprehensive one stop drinks management
solution which enables operators to reduce costs, improve productivity and
maximise sales, thereby driving improved profitability across the entire
drinks category. SmartDraught integration with the inventory platform will
also enable Vianet to provide a more cost effective and competitive brand
monitoring and market insight solution for the brewers.

 

Together with our recent investment in SmartDraught this acquisition positions
Vianet's hospitality operations firmly on the path to growth in the UK and to
establishing a profitable footprint in the USA. The management looks forward
to elaborating further at the time of our FY 2023 results announcement on
Tuesday 13 June 2023.

 

Application has been made for a total of 700,000 new ordinary shares to be
admitted to trading on AIM ("Admission"). Admission is expected to occur on 19
May 2023. Following Admission the total number of voting rights in the Company
is 29,508,914. This figure may be used by shareholders as the denominator for
the calculations by which they will determine if they are required to notify
their interest in, or a change of interest in, the Company under the FCA's
Disclosure and Transparency Rules.

 

James Dickson, Chairman of Vianet, commented:

"We are delighted to acquire the trade and assets of BMI. Having worked
alongside the team for some years we understand both the quality of the people
and the excellence of the software and we believe that combining their
products and skillset into the Vianet business will give us a truly market
leading offering.

This increased presence in the USA together with our evolving strategic
relationships will give us a significant boost in growing our presence in what
is a huge market, as well as providing us with increased opportunities in our
UK hospitality operations.

Vianet has had an encouraging start to FY2024 and looks forward to the future
with great confidence."

 

 

- Ends -

 

Enquiries:

 Vianet Group plc
 James Dickson, Chairman & Interim CEO      Tel: +44 (0) 1642 358 800

 Mark Foster, CFO                           www.vianetplc.com (http://www.vianetplc.com)
 Cenkos Securities plc
 Stephen Keys / Camilla Hume                Tel: +44 (0) 20 7397 8900
                                            www.cenkos.com (http://www.cenkos.com)

Investor enquiries:

 Dale Bellis           Tel: +44 (0) 20 7397 8900

 

About Vianet

Vianet Group capture and process operational data to produce critical insight,
analysis and actionable information enabling customers to transform business
performance.

Since its Admission to AIM in 2006, the Group has grown from its core beer
monitoring business to widen its offering and develop new businesses,
especially in vending telemetry and contactless payment solutions particularly
for the premium coffee sector.

Servicing over three hundred customers across the world and rendering live
data to our IOT platform from a footprint of over 210,000 connected devices
daily, Vianet is one of the largest business to business connected solutions
providers in Europe with established long-term relationships with blue chip
customers and growing recurring revenues which are over 85% of our total
revenues.

In our Smart Machines division, we connect a single data gathering device to a
customer's asset or system. The device then sends data back via our IOT
platform to cloud based servers. The flexibility and functionality of the
device means the technology can be applied to any machine which has the
capability to output data. In our award-winning end-to-end solution the device
is also used to connect our contactless payment solution and communicate
payment terms to our cloud-based payment services providers.

The Smart Zones division is where we connect multiple data gathering devices
into one or more systems or assets with the data from those devices being
communicated back to our IOT platform via a single 4G LTE communications hub.
The technology was originally developed for beverage and asset management in
drinks retailing but can be used with any data gathering device with a digital
output such as gaming machines, utilities management. and POS.

For further information, please visit www.vianetplc.com
(http://www.vianetplc.com)

 

 

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