REG - Vianet Group PLC - Trading Update and Notice of Interim Results <Origin Href="QuoteRef">VNET.L</Origin>

VianetAnnouncement

26/09/2017 07:00

RNS Number : 7524R
Vianet Group PLC
26 September 2017
Press Release  
26 September 2017
Vianet Group plc
("Vianet" or the "Group")
Trading Update and Notice of Interim Results
Vianet Group plc (AIM: VNET), the international provider of actionable data and business insight through devices connected to its Internet of Things ("IOT") platform, today provides the following trading update and notifies that it will release its results for the half year ended 30 September 2017 on Tuesday, 5 December 2017.
Trading for the first half of the current financial year is ahead of the same period last year with the growth in line with the Board's expectations. As such, the Board intends to declare a maintained interim dividend of 1.7 pence per share.
The Smart Machines division continues to deliver growth and to extend its penetration into the European market and this is demonstrated through a growth in connected devices. We are focussed on optimising the earnings visibility and have made good progress with increasing the proportion of recurring revenue as a percentage of new sales.
Whilst our Smart Zones division customers in the pub sector continue to face well publicised headwinds, our core beer flow monitoring operation maintained its contribution, and encouragingly the rate of pub closures in the sector appears to have slowed down. 
James Dickson, Chairman, commented: "The Team continue to make good commercial progress and are increasingly demonstrating that our strategy of delivering highly relevant solutions that drive strong returns for our customers is the right one. Given the Group's positive progress and encouraging prospects the Board is confident of continued growth." 
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Enquiries:
Vianet Group plc
James Dickson, Chairman
Tel: +44 (0) 1642 358 800
james.dickson@vianetplc.com
www.vianetplc.com
Cenkos Securities plc
Stephen Keys / Camilla Hume
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7397 8900
www.cenkos.com 
Media enquiries:
Yellow Jersey PR
Sarah Hollins
sarah@yellowjerseypr.com
 Tel: +44 (0)7764 947 137
www.yellowjerseypr.com
About Vianet
Vianet Group is a leading provider of actionable management information and business insight created through combining data from our smart Internet of Things ('IOT') solutions and external information sources. 
Since Admission to AIM in 2006, the Group has grown from its core beer monitoring business both organically and through strategic acquisitions to widen its offering and also 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 over 250,000 connected machines 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 with its own on-board communication capability to a customer's asset or system. The device then sends data back via our IOT platform to cloud based servers. The technology was originally developed for automated retailing machines, however the flexibility and functionality of the device means the technology can be applied to practically any machine which has the capability to output data. The device is also used to connect our contactless payment solution and communicate payment terms to our cloud based payment services providers where that application is also required.
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 and cloud based servers via a single 3G communications hub. The technology was originally developed for flow monitoring devices, temperature sensors, and asset management in drinks retailing but practically any data gathering device with a digital output could be connected to the communications hub where required such as gaming machines, utilities management and EPOS.
For further information, please visit www.vianetplc.com

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