Bango swings to positive earnings, upbeat despite coronavirus

The AIM-traded firm said its group revenue increased 41% to £9.31m for the year ended 31 December, with its payment and data monetisation revenue improving to £7.16m from £5.25m, and and £2.15m from £1.37m, respectively.

Group admin costs rose to £7.45m from £6.69m, following the board’s decision to increase investment in its data monetisation business.

Adjusted EBITDA for the full year turned positive to £0.45m, from an LBITDA loss of £0.87m.

Cash at 31 December totalled £2.69m, which was an increase from the company’s cash position at 30 June of £2.25m.

On the operational front, Bango said a number of new merchants joined “the Bango circle” including YouTube TV, AETolls and Spotify.

New routes were also launched for Amazon Prime, Pandora and Google Play in countries including Peru, Singapore, Chile, Myanmar, Morocco, South Africa and the United States.

Bango Resale technology opened up the three billion user prepaid market, and expanded “beyond mobile” with service launches for fixed and pay television operators.

The company added that Bango Marketplace was still gaining traction, with repeat sales to app developers who saw up to a nine times increase in the return on their marketing investment.

Credit card payment data was introduced to Bango Marketplace through a strategic partnership with payment and entertainment giant NHN, opening-up the Bango platform to new growth opportunities.

Looking ahead, management said it expected continued exponential end-user spend growth driven by success from existing customers, new opportunities from 5G and the new market opportunities that 2020 would bring.

It also said it was forecasting success with retail sales, bundled offerings and digital wallets, together with the monetisation of credit card payment data, which would provide an expanding market opportunity for Bango.

Management said it expected that Bango Marketplace would contribute further to revenue growth in 2020, as the momentum developed in 2019 continued.

It said the deals referred to in the December trading update were still in negotiation, and were expected to close in the first half of 2020.

“2019 was a great year for the continual evolution of the Bango Platform,” said chief executive officer Paul Larbey.

“In line with our strategy, once again we doubled end user spend, but more importantly expanded our market opportunity with the development of our data monetisation business.”

Larbey said Bango Marketplace was now established, and had entered 2020 with a “strong” pipeline.

“Bango's ambitious growth plans have delivered profit and, as I look at the opportunities ahead in 2020, my confidence in our ambitions is reinforced by Bango's unique combination of payments with data-driven intelligence for our customers and partners around the world.”

Bango also updated the market on the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, saying that following the outbreak of Covid-19, its employees in Cambridge, Milan, California, Tokyo and Seoul were increasingly operating from home, “fully equipped” to work remotely and online to maintain business growth.

It said 98% of Bango customer contact was already remote, so key activities were being maintained while travel is reduced.

Bango said that with no supply chain dependencies, its products were still available without interruption.

“While much of the platform operation is automated, we have an operations team across multiple sites ready to help our partners,” the board said in its statement.

“This support can be provided from anywhere with an internet connection.”

It said that, according to analysis, Bango experiences an increase in end-user spend during seasonal stay at home periods, for example the end-of-year holidays and festivals such as Ramadan and Christmas.

Marketers also spent more on their campaigns at such periods of higher online activity.

It said that, if the outbreak of Covid-19 led to more time at home, that was expected to generate more end user spending and more targeted marketing.

“Early data from Bango and others shows that consumer spending on online services and entertainment is already increasing, particularly in countries where there are extensive ‘stay at home’ policies.”

Bango said ita investment for growth was funded by internal cash generation, so access to capital was not an issue.

At 1249 GMT, shares in Bango were up 1.61% at 63p.