Final Results

Significant strategic and commercial progress

PCI-PAL PLC (AIM: PCIP), a leading world-wide provider of Payment Card Industry ("PCI") compliance solutions for contact centres, is pleased to announce full year results for the year ended 30 June 2018 (the "Period").

Financial Highlights 

• Revenue increased to £2.1m (2017: £1.9m)
• Recurring revenue increased to 79 per cent of total revenue (2017: 65 per cent)
• Exit run-rate for live customers MRR ("monthly recurring revenue") increased over 60% to £0.2m per month at 30 June 2018 (30 June 2017: £0.1m per month)
• Total contracted RAV ("recurring annual value of revenue") increased to £2.5m per annum at 30 June 2018 (30 June 2017: £2.1m per annum) -
• Pipeline of qualified opportunities RAV stood at £6.2m per annum at 30 June 2018
• Adjusted EBIT loss from continuing operations increased to £3.7m (2017: £1.7m)* following the planned further growth in headcount, investment in technology and expansion into North America during the year
• Loss before tax from continuing operations of £3.7m (2017: £1.7m)
• Improved gross margin 46% (2017: 43%)
• £4.95m fundraise completed in January 2018
• Cash and cash equivalents at 30 June 2018 were £3.7m (30 June 2017: £2.0m)

 * Adjusted EBIT loss is operating loss adjusted to exclude share-based payments and foreign exchange (losses)/gains.

 Technology Highlights

• Second-generation Amazon Web Services ("AWS") platform launched in November 2017 after being certified as PCI DSS Level 1 compliant
• Regional instances of the platform launched in UK, US and Canada
• Capitalised a further £0.5m of research and development as part of the continued investment in the new second-generation AWS platform

Operational Highlights 

• Secured 48 new contracts from new and existing customers (2017: 19)
• Further growth in customer base, which now stands at 94 (2017: 60)
• 63% of all new customers sourced through our partner channel
• International expansion:
  • US office opened in Charlotte, North Carolina.
  • US office signed five new customers in US and Canada since launch in February 2018
  • First sale achieved in Scandinavia
• Employee base grown to 41 (2017: 29), of whom 7 are US based

William Catchpole, CEO, commented:

"We are fast approaching the second anniversary of the re-organisation when the Company decided to exclusively focus on secure payment solutions and the progress reported shows just how far we have come in a short period of time.  The sales momentum we have seen this year and the 48 new contracts we have signed underscore our confidence in our offering and the market's readiness to engage in meeting their PCI and data compliance obligations.

"As we move in to the new financial year, we will continue to focus on the many ways in which our commercial momentum is being driven. Our opportunities for geographic expansion continues to develop.

"Our class-leading, second-generation AWS platform, is the jewel in the business enabling rapid deployment of the core platform in any region where our customers require it along with providing unparalleled resilience.

"We have seen particular success in the expansion of our formative channel business and the AWS platform is a key component of that; enabling light-touch, non-invasive integration methods that empower our partners, and customers, to solve the challenges of payment security within their contact centre with no detriment to their core operating systems.  The opportunities we are now being offered would not have been available to us using the original platform. 

"The move from direct sale to a principally channel sale approach to market typically impacts short term revenues, however, we believe the long-term benefits of making the change will outweigh this short term impact. 

"This year is showing signs of being another exciting year for PCI-PAL."

PUBLICATION OF ANNUAL REPORT AND ACCOUNTS & NOTICE OF AGM

Copies of the annual report and accounts and notice of AGM will be posted to shareholders prior to 18 September 2018 and electronic copies can be downloaded from the Company's website (https://www.pcipal.com/).

For further information, please contact:

About PCI Pal:

PCI Pal is a Payment Card Industry-Data Security Standard ("PCI DSS") Level 1 certified supplier of contact centre payment solutions and services, with operations in Europe and North America, enabling organisations to take customer payments securely over the phone, and to de-risk their business from the threat of data loss and cybercrime. 

PCI Pal solutions have been procured by more than 90 organisations, many of which are global businesses in the retail, services, and utilities sectors, thereby ensuring they meet industry rules and regulations governing customer data protection.

To understand our core services better please view our video on https://www.pcipal.com/en/solutions/agent-assist/

CHAIRMAN'S STATEMENT

As the Chairman of the Board, I am pleased to report that PCI-PAL continued to make good progress during the last twelve months.  Our business continued to evolve and develop which has been under-pinned by the £4.95 million fundraising we undertook in January 2018.

We have seen significant progress in the development of the PCI compliance market due to GDPR and some well publicised breaches by several major companies and well-known brands.   PCI-PAL is benefiting from this evolution of the market and has seen a marked increase in enquiries for its global solution.  In the period, we have seen a significant increase in our sales pipeline, growth in our customer base and further strengthening of our leading position as the only pure cloud solution in our market.

Our core strategic aim includes building the best technological solution available to help organisations reduce the risk of fraud and PCI compliance costs by removing sensitive payment data from IT environments in contact centres.  

Importantly too, PCI-PAL has continued to evolve over the last 12 months into a focussed channel sales model, primarily made up of resellers and strategic referral partners.  The executive management is successfully executing this strategy for growth through our partner channel, which is now fully-engaged and growing in both sophistication and breadth, and this wider global reach continues to drive our momentum.

Our North American operation has started well.   The business was established in May 2017 and the first employee joined us in July 2017.   The North America AWS instance of our platform was launched in February 2018, following the fund raising, and we are now seeing the positive impact of the investment with signed contracts, expansion of our channel model, and, as a result, growth in sales pipeline across both the US and Canada.   Employee numbers have continued to grow in the region and stood at seven by the end of the financial year, including James Barham, who transferred with his family to our Charlotte office in April 2018 to head up the team in the region taking on the role of COO - North America, having previously run the UK operation since it was launched in 2012.   Post the year end more high calibre staff have joined and we are starting to see good growth in the opportunities available to us.  I am looking forward to seeing how our investment in this strategically important market develops over the coming twelve months.

People

While businesses experiencing rapid change often face managerial challenges, the Board is fully engaged with the executive management team to ensure that the Group is positioned to address the growth challenge head-on. In particular, ensuring the ongoing recruitment at the appropriate time of senior experienced staff with strong track records who can proactively engage in the challenge of building a world-class technology company.

We are an ambitious company looking to take first-mover advantage with our unique fully cloud based solutions.   We have grown very fast as an organisation.   From 12 employees in one office in September 2016 at the time of the reorganisation we are, twenty-one months later, 41 members of staff across two geographic regions.  

I believe we have built a first-class, experienced team and it is down to their hard work and determination that we have built the foundations for a strong business.  Without the energy, commitment and enthusiasm of the PCI-PAL employees the growth and potential of PCI-PAL would not be what they are today.  We thank them for another year of hard work and execution.

Corporate Governance

During the financial year we have reviewed the business against the latest Corporate Governance Code published by the Quoted Company Alliance.  In the Governance section we outline how we have complied with the Code and where our policies depart from the Code together with an explanation of the reasons for that departure.

Changes in Accounting Rules

The Company will be implementing IFRS 15: Revenue from Contracts with Customers, with effect from 1 July 2018, on a fully retrospective basis. When the Company reports the interim results for the six months to 31 December 2018, the financial statements will be presented against restated financial statements for the year ended 30 June 2018.  Whilst the impact of IFRS 15 is limited for the Group's historic results it will have a more meaningful impact in the coming years as we start to see our sales momentum materialise from our recent investments.    It is important to note that neither the business model nor the Group's market opportunity is impacted. The Group does not intend to change the commercial model of the business, so cash generation is also not impacted by the implementation of IFRS 15.

Momentum

In the year ahead, we are focused on maintaining our momentum.  The attractiveness of our market will inevitably encourage competition.  However, we believe 2019 will be a year in which we capitalise on our evolution to a channel sales business, as we extend our offering to the addressable market through these major resellers and alliance partners, utilising our highly scalable, true cloud environment as we go. 

I look forward to building on these foundations over the next twelve months.

Chris Fielding

Non-Executive Chairman

Chief Executive's Statement

Overview

This financial year was a year of expansion, not only in the UK but also North America, and of commercial momentum.  We have seen good increases in our recurring revenues, customer numbers, and geographic coverage. Alongside this, we have continued to build the business, increasing our employee base and opening a new US office.

As our business has developed, so has the market we service.  The PCI compliance market is now advancing beyond the early hype stage and our partner channel continues to grow and diversify in recognition of this shift. This channel was responsible for sourcing 63% of all new customers in FY18 and there was a healthy number of customers contracting for our solutions.

We are pleased to report that total recognised revenue for the year ended 30 June 2018 increased to £2.1m (2017: £1.9m) driven by sales from both new and existing customers.  Sales momentum built throughout the year and our exit MRR at 30th June 2018 stood at £0.2m (2017: £0.1m).  We continue to have an extremely high customer retention rate.  A strong foundation for the future.

Like-for-like operating losses for the period were £3.8m (2017: £1.7m) and comparable adjusted EBITDA ⁽¹⁾ losses for the period were £3.5m (2017: £1.7m), both representing continued investment in our international expansion. Cash and cash equivalents at 30 June 2018 were £3.7m (30 June 2017: £2.0m), reflecting the fundraising undertaken during the year.

Product development

At the end of October 2017, we announced that our second-generation, PCI-PAL Amazon Web Services based cloud platform, had been certified as PCI DSS Level 1 Compliant allowing us to launch the new platform to the market.  Since this date we have made good progress in introducing the service to our major target locations.   As at 30 June 2018 we had live and testing instances of the new platform in London, Virginia and Montreal. Since the launch to the year end, we have signed 15 new contracts with a combined RAV of £0.29m.  Interest in the new platform continues to build. 

This second-generation platform is technically advanced, and as highlighted in our trading update on 11 July 2018, our partners and prospective customers have undertaken significant levels of load testing.  This level of testing was more than we originally anticipated and as a result of the additional testing, our first customers went live last month, after some eight months of deployment testing.  It is only at go-live that we start recognising the monthly recurring income and any associated professional services fees. 

In terms of installing the platform infrastructure, our Canadian regional instance, in Montreal, took us about one week to initiate from start to finish and was deployed at a minimal upfront cost. The limited cost and fast deployment time to a new territory is a major benefit of the second-generation platform.

Amazon Web Services have locations almost everywhere we want to be.  The ability for us to respond to demand globally by opening territory specific instances of the platform as required should be a major advantage compared to the historic, old-fashioned method of co-locating services with partner telecom companies in their data centres on a revenue share basis.  Each territorial instance will allow data to be kept within that region/country to ensure that all the local data sovereignty rules are fully adhered to.  However, all our development work and operational aspects of running the AWS instances around the world will continue to be run from our UK offices, thus enhancing efficiency.

Looking forward, we believe we will, in the next twelve months, be opening a regional instance of the platform in mainland Europe to assist in our expansion into the region and as part of our post Brexit contingency planning.  We are also actively considering our expansion plans in the Asia Pacific region.

¹⁾ being EBITDA before share-based payments and foreign exchange gains/(losses) to remove the effect of volatile share-based payments expenses and foreign exchange gains/(losses))

Sales and marketing

It is PCI-PAL's stated objective to deliver its services in partnership with major partners across the world.  The Board is very pleased with the progress that has been made. At the end of the last financial year PCI-PAL was contracted with relatively few channel partners, the majority of whom were focused on the UK market.   During this financial year we have successfully negotiated new agreements with several important partners including Capita Pay 360 in Europe, NewVoiceMedia globally, and a major payment service provider and a leading cloud service provider in North America.  Whilst this approach, compared to our previous direct sale strategy, typically impacts near term revenue realisation, it benefits ultimate contract capture and in due course speed of on-boarding and long-term revenue growth. 

North America

The regional business was only opened in July 2017 and fully launched in February 2018.   Despite this relatively recent launch, we have signed and on-boarded a major payment gateway, which has already bought to us two contracted customers.  We have also partnered with a major regional telco, which has verbally confirmed its first sale in Canada, and the US business has signed its first customer with a global cloud contact centre provider.

In the financial year ended 30 June 2018, the North American division signed 5 new customers of which three were via our channel partners.

EMEA

The EMEA region is a more developed market than the North American market and our PCI Compliant services have been sold in to this region since 2012, to customers primarily located in the UK.

During the last twelve months we have continued to drive our growth strategy forward.    As well as investing in the new North American operation, a great deal of change has been undertaken within the original UK business, including the appointment of a new very experienced President of Sales EMEA.   He has been asked to expand our sales growth across the region and we are already seeing some important opportunities.

We continue to focus on developing our channel partnerships in Europe and we expect the numbers to continue to grow in the next financial year.   We are particularly pleased to have received confirmation from a major UK telco provider with operations across the globe that they wish to start selling our services to their clients during the next financial year.  

In the financial year ended 30 June 2018, the EMEA division signed 43 new contracts (2017: 19) of which 63% were via our channel partners.

Of particular note, the Company was pleased to announce two recent contracts wins in Europe.   This included our first Nordic contract (one of the region's railways) and a contract with a significant UK utility provider, with an aggregate RAV of £97,000 for a minimum three years   

Also, I am pleased with the fact that we have reached terms for delivering a very significant contract, via a partner reseller, with a major contact centre in the UK for which we have already received a payment for Phase 1 of this complex and difficult project.   We have also agreed terms with a major European insurance company as well as received verbal confirmation from our first important Spanish customer.

Pipeline

Our pipeline of qualified sales opportunities continues to grow across all our targeted regions, with the RAV currently standing at £8.8m, which has more than doubled in the last six months.  

Partnership strategy

Our stated strategy is to focus on the channel sales route to market, evolving away from our previous mainly direct sale route. I am pleased at how quickly this evolution is happening albeit that we are still learning the timelines of the contracting, testing and go-live process.

Working with channel partners around the world will inevitably mean that revenue momentum may take time to build, but once established we believe we will have access to a far greater market opportunity than that available from direct sales alone.   It takes a long time to negotiate and win each new partner and then many months more to integrate our PCI compliant solution into their own, often broader, solution.  Despite this time taken to "on-board" our solution into our partners service offerings, it should mean we are looking at much shorter go-live times in the future once the partner becomes accustomed to installing the solution. Hence, as the new business wins start to go live, we are confident, based on our sizeable and growing pipeline, that we will experience strong growth in revenues.   This gives us greater confidence for the future.

Market review

During the year GDPR was introduced and much hype was generated, in particular by the legal profession regarding the need for businesses to ensure that they adhere to data guidelines.   How many emails did we all get regarding readiness for GDPR?    There is almost an inevitability that in the future a big firm is going to receive a very big fine, up to 4% of global turnover, and this in turn will raise awareness of the importance of being compliant with data protection regulations. All the awareness of the regulations and potential implications has meant that many boards are now prepared to put budgets aside and commit to data security projects. This does not mean automatic adoption is rolled out within weeks, but we believe it should only help us win more contracts and deliver our services in the future.

Competing in the market place

UK companies are the leading suppliers of PCI compliant services around the globe, reflecting the early adoption of the regulations within the UK.   We are one of only two British quoted companies in our section of the compliance market, and the only true cloud vendor. There are other solution providers and the likelihood is that new entrants will emerge in time, but we believe that with our technological first-mover advantage and our ability to gain meaningful traction with prospective large global partners, will make it a less appealing sector for new entrants.

We continue to grow and deepen our partnerships with channel providers and telecom companies who, with us, are working to make their customer data PCI compliant.   New partners and payment gateways seem to be attracted to the technical architecture of our multi-tenanted, cloud platform and the ability to have a homogenised product globally. 

Against the competition, PCI-PAL continues to differentiate on the purity of our solution offering, the enterprise scale and security, performance and adaptability. This value arises in the comfort of knowing the solution is going to meet data security, regulatory compliance, and governance requirements locally, whilst being a standard solution available to all the partners clients around the globe.

We believe that the combination of being pioneers in the pure cloud environment supported by technical partners and a robust methodology is appealing to both our resellers and our customers and, along with our public status and strong balance sheet, sets us apart from other PCI solution vendors.

Executing our strategy 

The Group set out a growth strategy at the time of its re-organisation based on three key strategic objectives.  During the past twelve months we have continued to make meaningful progress against each, as follows:

1.    Building a single, scalable technology platform to allow the delivery of our services worldwide:

We have continued to invest in our pure cloud AWS platform. Since the formal sign off as PCI DSS Level 1 compliant on October 2017 we have continued to develop our product development road map, focusing on adding more core functionality and ensuring the platform is stable and robust and capable of being rolled out anywhere in the world, where required.  The Group capitalised a further £0.5m of research and development expenditure as part of the planned development road map.  We have, also, during the year built an infrastructure of skilled specialists capable of discussing and deploying the services with any organisation.

The first AWS instance was established in the UK in November 2017, after the successful certification process. Following the fundraising in late January 2018, we launched our regional US instance in February 2018 and a regional Canadian instance in April 2018.   These two new international instances have now been rigorously tested by our partners and we are now starting the go-live processes with the first North American based customers. 

The rolling out of each platform instance was quick and very easy when compared to the old first-generation platform that would have taken months, if not more than a year, to build in each location.  Having proved the ability to successfully roll out quickly and efficiently we will consider expanding the coverage to mainland Europe and the Asia Pacific region when appropriate, on the back of contracted revenue.  We can deploy a regional instance far faster than a customer can prepare itself for go-live.

The cost of each new regional platform is relatively low - we hire appropriate processing capacity from Amazon Web Services for which we pay a monthly amount.  The only upfront costs we commit to are: a session border controller licence (allowing VoIP telephony access over the network in the new region); and a small number of SIP/RTP licences (which enable individual VoIP call handling).   This will give each instance the capacity to handle an initial amount of licences.   As demand for the system grows we can automatically add to the AWS processing power and bolt on addition perpetual licences so the system grows with revenue.

We have applied for a number of patents regarding the new processes we have developed for the AWS platform to protect our investments.

2.    International growth:

Our focus this year has been to establish and develop our capabilities in North America.   We have made significant and pleasing progress with this planned expansion backed up by the fund-raising undertaken in January 2018.

Since the formal launch of our services in the region in February 2018 we have established valuable partnerships and have sold our first solutions.    I am particularly pleased that we have also made strong progress in Canada, where our opening of a Canadian platform was well received.

We have a strong team in North America, now headed by James Barham who relocated with his family to Charlotte in April 2018.   We will continue to develop our relationships with core partners and look forward to building momentum in this important region.

Looking forward, through our new partnerships, we are already being introduced to other important potential customers in different regions - especially in Asia Pacific.   We are already in negotiation with a number of these clients and hope to win our first contracts in this financial year.  

3.    Channel partners:

We continue to make great strides towards our goal of having 90%+ of all new contracts generated by channel partners.  I am pleased to say that we are ahead of our initial expectations set back at the time of the reorganisation in September 2016.

Our belief is that our partners will already have strong and trusted relationships with the potential contact centre customers for PCI-PAL.   Being a specialist solution provider only dealing with PCI DSS compliance, and no other competing products, will allow these partners to resell our solution as a value-added service with their full recommendation.

Particularly pleasing are our new relationships with Paymetric in the US, NewVoiceMedia in the UK, US and Australia, and Capita Pay 360 in the UK. We believe we are attractive to channel partners because we supply a complementary solution that solves their customers PCI compliance challenges, that is light-touch to integrate (cloud to cloud) and cost effective to re-sell.

Clearly, signing and working with new channel partners is initially expensive, it takes a great deal of effort to sign these partners and during this process we are not generating any revenues. However, we firmly believe that by partnering with these larger companies we are opening-up the availability of our solution to a far larger pool of potential customers while raising barriers to entry for future competitors.

Our work in this area is beginning to show real promise. Of our current sales pipeline, £6.8m of potential RAV or 77% of the total has been generated by our channel partners.   

Operational review

As the business grows we need to ensure that our operational infrastructure evolves with the organisation.  The biggest challenges we faced this year were:

• Preparing the organisation for the launch of our second-generation AWS platform,
• Preparing our systems so that we can deploy our solutions in North America and the rest of the world,
• Developing a core group of SIP specialists and architects capable of working with our new clients ensuring that the integration aspects of the new platform are fully designed and documented,
• Developing a full on-boarding programme for our channel partners,
• As well as ensuring that we continue to deliver the first-generation platform requirements.

I am pleased to report that we have made good progress on all fronts and would like to personally thank all our team for undertaking this mammoth task and would like to welcome all the new specialists we have employed as part of this process.

Employees

As at 30 June 2018, PCI-PAL had 41 (2017: 29) employees worldwide. Whilst this level of growth inevitably places challenges on the Company, the management team has worked hard to build a new appropriate organisational infrastructure. In particular, we have strengthened the management team with key appointments including a President of Sales EMEA and a new senior VP of Channel Sales in North America.

Our public company status and employee share options are enabling us to attract high quality talent. We will continue to invest in people to support our growth plans, and in systems and processes to provide an organisational platform for the next phase of PCI-PAL's growth.

Financing

One of the last planks of our strategy was to ensure that we had the financial resources to deliver on our prospects.

The initial growth and development of the Group was initially funded by the sale of our contact centres business in September 2016. During the period we received a payment of £1.0m from the purchaser and also an accelerated payment of £0.1m.    £2.2 million is still to be collected via a loan note receivable with the next loan payment due in October 2018.

To fund the next stage of our growth, we raised £4.95m before expenses through an equity placing.     Of the funds raised, £3.90m was raised from Venture Capitalist Trusts and these funds have been ring-fenced for the expansion of our North American business. The remaining £1.05m raised was used to pay the costs incurred and has given us additional working capital.

During the year we changed NOMAD and broker to finnCap Ltd.   We believe that as we continue to evolve and deliver our business model their leading sector experience will help us deliver greater shareholder value.

Dividend

The Board is not proposing the payment of a dividend in respect of the year ended 30 June 2018.

Summary and outlook

This has been a year of good progress for PCI-PAL.  Our technologically advanced platform has been launched and the global partner sales channel, built to commercialise the opportunity, has started to deliver momentum, strengthening our market position and underpinning the belief in our long-term potential. 

In the new financial year, the focus remains on generating revenue from our ever-increasing pipeline of orders and opportunities.

Whilst the volume and value of new business are good indicators of market traction and performance, the continuation of recurring licences sold in prior years is of equally critical importance to the Group's strategy.  We will continue to invest in the stability and security of our global cloud platform to support multi-national brands.

We remain confident in our strategy for the Group and in its delivery against our plans over the next few years.

I look forward with much excitement to the future as the business continues to gain momentum and scale. The new financial year should be another year of significant progress as we look to convert our exciting pipeline of opportunities into signed contracts.

William Catchpole

Chief Executive Officer

CONSOLIDATED STATEMENT OF COMPREHENSIVE INCOME

FOR THE YEAR ENDED 30 JUNE 2018

The accompanying accounting policies and notes form an integral part of these financial statements.

CONSOLIDATED STATEMENT OF FINANCIAL POSITION

AS AT 30 JUNE 2018

The accompanying accounting policies and notes form an integral part of these financial statements.

The Board of Directors approved and authorised the issue of the financial statements on 4 September 2018.

CONSOLIDATED STATEMENT OF CHANGES IN EQUITY FOR THE YEAR ENDED 30 JUNE 2018

The accompanying accounting policies and notes form an integral part of these financial statements.

CONSOLIDATED STATEMENT OF CASH FLOWS

FOR THE YEAR ENDED 30 JUNE 2018