Bidstack confirms FY revenues ahead of market views, wider losses

In-game advertising platform Bidstack confirmed on Monday that revenues for the year to the end of December 2020 have exceeded market expectations, but also said that losses have widened.

Subject to audit, full-year results are expected to include revenue of around £1.70m, up from £140,000 in 2019, a pre-tax loss of £7.18m versus a loss of £5.36m the year before, available cash resources of £2.35m compared to £3.15m and net assets of about £2.45m, down from £3.61m.

Bidstack said that over the second half of 2020, its sales network ramped up "significantly" in core markets, with a focus on key accounts such as Dentsu, WPP, Publicis, Omnicom, Interpublic, Accenture and Havas.

Key advertising brands have included Burberry, PUIG, Duracell, KFC, Doritos, BMW, VW, Acer and Wargaming, broadly distributed across the consumer staples, luxury, automotive, technology and food sectors.

Bidstack also said the pandemic "may well" result in a further lengthening of sales cycles. To address this, it will concentrate on "the appropriate implementation of its technology even if this is at the expense of some short term opportunities," it said.

Chief executive officer James Draper said: "In 2020, Bidstack has made strong and tangible progress towards our ambition to become the global leading advertising and monetisation platform for interactive entertainment. Bidstack has proven its initial concept through bringing premium advertisers into the world of gaming, securing exclusive contracts with household name game developers and building the technology infrastructure to enable both sides to seamlessly transact.

"Our native in-game strategy has been to take no shortcuts from a technological or commercial perspective. This is now paying off, with clients planning around our inventory and with our technology they're able to report transparently on the performance of campaigns via AdConsole, our proprietary tools, or via their DSP of choice, such as The Trade Desk."