IMImobile has reported India & South East Asia revenues of £8.5 million for the financial year ended March 31, 2014, registering a 21% decline from £10.8 million in the previous year.
IMImobile mentions that the revenue dipped by 12% in terms of local currency and attributed this decline to the implementation of TRAI’s VAS guidelines that impacted IMImobile’s customers (primarily mobile operators) which led to a period of transition as the new third party consent gateways were implemented.
The decline in revenues along with a significant depreciation of the Indian Rupee last year, led to the gross profit for the Indian market declining by 29% to £5.9 million for the year, from £8.3 million profit in the previous year. In terms of local currency, the gross profit dipped by 20% for the year.
The region accounts for 20% of IMIMobile’s overall revenues that was at £43.4 million for the year, down from 28.1% contribution in the previous year.
New Contracts: IMImobile mentions that during the year, it secured additional managed service deals with a major Indian operator and a new operator in Myanmar.
It also secured its first major government contract in India, to supply a regional state government having 65 million habitants with an m-Governance multi-channel platform that will enable citizens to access various government and third party services via IVR, USSD, SMS, Mobile internet and on-device apps.
New product launches: IMImobile launched two new products during the year – a mobile & social audience engagement platform called DaVinci Social and a Twitter-based self care service TweetServe.
DaVinci Social was deployed across BBC in July this year, following which the company had mentioned that the BBC will be using the platform to manage its inbound and outbound audience interactions on its radio, TV and live events across SMS, MMS, E-mail, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. On the other hand, TweetServe was deployed on the UK-based mobile network O2 in December last year.
New US office: During the year, IMImobile opened sales office in Atlanta and Georgia. The company also secured a contract with a “leading prepay operator” during the year.
Europe operations
Revenues from Europe (underlying) region was at £21.1 million for the year, a marginal 4% growth from £20.3 million in the previous year. The gross profit for the region also grew by 8% to £10.9 million from £10.1 in the previous year. IMIMobile mentions that this excludes the impact of its non-core Greek subsidiary which was sold in May 2013.
During the year, IMImobile secured a deployment with “Mobile by Sainsbury’s”, a Mobile Virtual Network Operator by Sainsbury’s on the Vodafone network. The company provides a managed solution for customer engagement, the on-boarding experience of new customers and campaign management.
TextLocal acquisition: Last month, IMImobile also acquired UK-based mobile marketing & communications company TextLocal for around £13.15 million. This includes £10 million in cash and around £1 million worth of IMImobile shares (707,564 shares at a price of 141.33p per share).
Post acquisition, IMImobile was expected to integrate TextLocal’s messenger platform to its core infrastructure to strengthen its mobile engagement product suite. This acquisition also gave IMImobile access to a substantial new client base comprising small and medium sized businesses, providing them opportunities to cross-sell their offerings to these businesses. More on that here.
Middle East & Africa operations
The revenues in the Middle East & Africa region more than doubled to £13.3 million for the year, from £6.5 million in the previous year. This was driven by 68% increase in recurring revenues as more services & countries were launched under Group agreements with MTN & Orange, particularly in Ivory Coast, Democratic Republic of Congo, Botswana and Senegal.
The gross profit also grew by 149% to £10.7 million for the year, from £4.3 million profit in the previous year.
IMImobile mentions that it completed deployments in Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana and Iran during the year and signed two significant multi-million dollar license deals with a global Systems Integrator and leading operator group in the Middle East. While the company didn’t disclose any specific names, it mentioned these license deals are typically for an installation of the DaVinci ESP or multiple modules in the platform.
Financials
The overall profit after tax grew by 86% to £3.9 million for the year, from £2.1 million in the previous year while the EBITDA grew by 30% to £7.3 million for the year, from £5.6 million in the previous year.
IMImobile’s London IPO: Earlier in June this year, IMImobile had raised £30 million (before expenses) through an IPO on London Stock Exchange’s sub-market AIM (Alternative Investment Market). It had issued 25 million ordinary shares of 10 pence each at an issue price of 120 pence per share. This represented about 53% of the company’s total issued share capital.
After fees and acquisition of IMI Mobile India pursuant to the acquisition agreements, IMImobile mentions that it raised net proceeds of around £8 million to grow its revenue & profit from its core business and for future expansion plans. More on IMImobile IPO here.
Total Cash: IMImobile has a total cash and cash equivalents was at £9.3 million as of March 31, 2014, up from £4.6 million as of March 31, 2013.
