PCI-PAL set to beat current expectations for full trading year

Cloud payment technology company PCI-PAL said in an update on Tuesday that, following continued strong performance since the half-year, it anticipated results for the full year ending June would be better than current market expectations.

The AIM-traded firm said the first half was another period of “significant” progress, with that momentum continuing into the third quarter.

At the end of the quarter, all key metrics for the group were performing ahead of management expectations.

The company said its key indicator of future recurring revenues of total annual contracted value increased to £12.5m as at 31 March, following a further £1.1m added in the third quarter.

Annual recurring revenue had now reached a key milestone of £10m, and as at 31 March, cash had increased to £6.4m, from £5.5m at the end of December.

The company said it was continuing to cement its position as a “leader” in true-cloud solutions through strong channel relationships in its space, having signed a number of new strategic target partnerships recently.

In the quarter, the group also renewed its existing long-standing relationships with two of the largest government contact centres in the UK, adding a further minimum two-year term to each relationship.

With the strong expansion in existing customer accounts, combined with churn rates of less than 3%, PCI-PAL said it was continuing to deliver “excellent” net revenue retention performance, which now stood at 118% at the end of the quarter.

As a result of continued strong financial performance across the business, the directors said they now expected that results for the year to June would exceed their previous expectations.

“Since launching our cloud services five years ago, we have delivered on our core objectives of: establishing the first globally available, true-cloud secure payment platform for business communications; building a market-leading partner ecosystem; and making our services available globally to partners and customers alike,” said chief executive officer James Barham.

“We are now reaping the returns on this investment through a valuable recurring SaaS business model.

“With another strong quarter delivered, that model has enabled the group to further increase its market expectations for the current financial year.”

Barham noted that last year, the company took the decision to invest further in international expansion, as well as in product development, in order to create complementary solutions and services that were relevant to its partner ecosystem and its end customers.

“The international expansion is on track as planned and we are very excited with the initial momentum in our product development activities.

“As well as strengthening our core compliance and security-centric products today, we will begin to layer in additional payment-centric services specifically designed for the business communications market.

“We expect this in turn to further grow our addressable market as these new products are released.”

At 1442 BST, shares in PCI-PAL were up 8.69% at 74.45p.