REG - Vianet Group PLC - Trading Update and Notice of Results

VianetAnnouncement

02/05/2023 07:00

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RNS Number : 9052X  Vianet Group PLC  02 May 2023

02 May 2023

Vianet Group plc

 

("Vianet" or the "Group")

 

Trading Update and Notice of Results

 

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 the following trading update, and notifies
that it will release its results for the year ended 31 March 2023 on Tuesday,
13 June 2023.

 

·    Full year turnover is expected to be up c 7% to over £14.0m (FY
2022: £13.2m and FY 2021: £8.4m).

·    Operating profit is anticipated to be up c 30% at £3.1m (FY 2022:
£2.4m and FY 2021: £0.7m loss) which is ahead of market expectations.

 

Contract renewals and new contract wins have been encouraging, and recurring
revenue from long term customers remains high at over 85% of turnover.
Additionally, our gross margins continue to remain strong at over 65% despite
the challenge of semiconductor supply chain stock premium costs, which have
risen by £230k compared to FY 2022.

 

Cash generation, pre working capital adjustments, is expected to be c £3.5m
representing over 100% of EBITDA and signifying a return to the robust
pre-pandemic levels of profit to cash conversion. We have applied to HMRC for
a £0.9m tax refund, in respect to R&D losses for FY 2021 and FY 2022,
which we expect to receive in Q1, subject to any follow up clarifications from
HMRC. An estimated £1.8m of remaining historic trading losses will be carried
forward and, where possible, applied to the FY 2023 tax calculations.

 

The year to March 2023 has seen a concerted commercial focus on the launch and
the migration of existing customers to our new SmartVend vending management
platform, and also the launch of SmartDraught which provides the hospitality
industry with an increasingly comprehensive beverage management system.  In
addition, the team has made excellent progress towards commercialising our
solutions in new verticals, and in developing partnerships with both Suresite
and QR payment solutions provider, Vendekin. We believe that we continue to be
at the forefront of our chosen industries' development and look forward to
being able to elaborate on our progress in the FY 2023 results announcement.

 

 

James Dickson, Chairman of Vianet, commented:

"Despite facing challenging economic conditions and global supply chain
pressures, I am delighted that a strong team performance has resulted in the
Group making significant progress on several key projects and initiatives and
on delivering good financial results.

 

The continued progress we have made means we are excited about our FY 2024
prospects to accelerate our vending connection footprint, resume growth in our
UK hospitality operations, gain significant traction in new verticals, and
achieve meaningful expansion for Vianet Americas.

 

 

- 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 300 customers across the world and rendering live data to our
IOT platform from a footprint of over 250,000 connected devices daily, Vianet
is one of the largest business to business (b2b) 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 utilised 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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