Interim Results for the six months to 31 December 2023 Board Change, Analyst Briefing & Investor Presentation

PCI-PAL PLC (AIM: PCIP), the global cloud provider of secure payment solutions for business communications, is pleased to announce its unaudited interim results for the six months to 31 December 2023.

Financial highlights for the period

Operating highlights in the period

• Positive Group Adjusted EBITDA underpinned by revenue growth of 20%.
• Positive cash generation from operations in period and excellent progress being made towards our near-term objective of delivering sustained profitability.
• Cash and cash equivalents at the period end was £0.8m and net cash was £0.55m. As at today’s date the Company’s debt facility is currently undrawn.
• TACV increased 18% year on year to £17.4 million (2022: £14.7 million), contributed to by continued new business sales momentum, with £1.6 million ACV added in the period.
• Strong growth of US operations with new business ACV in the region up 35% on same period in prior year.
• Exceptional service levels, including 100% global platform uptime for the period, contributing to strong customer retention with gross revenue retention at 96% for H1.
• Good progress made in product development, with new products and enhancements now coming to market with key partner roll out commencing in H2.
• Comprehensive victory in UK trial in patent lawsuit.

Current trading

H2 has started positively with new business sales momentum continuing. ACV year to date is now at £2.2m which is 25% ahead of the same period in the prior year. We remain focused on the near-term profitability objectives that we have set for the Company this year and look forward to the launch of our new products and enhancements during the second half. We are also very much focused on capitalising on the market opportunity before us and continue to progress the strategic initiatives that we believe will enhance shareholder value in the long term.

Board Change

PCI Pal today announces that William Good has informed the Board of his intention to retire as Chief Financial Officer and Executive Director of the Company to pursue his other existing business interests.  The Board has initiated a process to appoint a successor and William will continue in his role until that successor is in place, to ensure a smooth handover of responsibilities.

¹ Adjusted EBITDA is the loss on Statutory Operating Activities before depreciation and amortisation, exchange movements charged to the profit and loss, exceptional items and expenses relating to share option charges.

² ACV is the annual recurring revenue generated from a contract.

³ TACV is the total annual recurring revenue of all signed contracts, whether invoiced and included in deferred revenue or still to be deployed and/or not yet invoiced.

⁴ ARR is the Annual Recurring Revenue of all the deployed contracts.

⁵ NRR is the net retention rate of the contracts that are live on the AWS platform rate and is calculated using the opening total value of deployed contracts 12 months ago less the ACV of lost deployed contracts in the last 12 months plus the ACV of upsold contracts signed in the last 12 months all divided by the opening total value of deployed contracts at the start of the 12-month period.

⁶ Customer retention is calculated using the formula 1 minus (the ACV of lost deployed contracts on the AWS platform in the last 12 months divided by the opening total value of deployed contracts 12 months ago).

⁷ Adjusted loss from operating activities is the loss on Statutory Operating Activities before exchange movements charged to the profit and loss, exceptional items and expenses relating to share option charges.

Commenting on the results for the period, James Barham, Chief Executive Officer said:

“Firstly, I would like to take this opportunity to thank William Good who has been a hugely valuable member of the team at PCI Pal since he joined the Company in 2017.  We have worked very closely together, and he has provided excellent and trusted support as we undertook a new strategy to capture the market opportunity for our technology. William leaves PCI Pal in an excellent place, with the business growing from strength to strength.

“I am delighted with the continued progress we have made in H1, and I believe that we are well on our way to achieving the key financial objectives we set for the year. Revenue growth momentum continues as a result of the accumulation of new business and also exceptionally high customer retention rates. Our cloud native partner-first strategy continues to deliver excellent results.  Together with the strength of our technology and high service levels we have an excellent platform for future growth.

“The continued progress of the business over the last two years is even more pleasing given the management distraction and cash we have used on the patent case. With the comprehensive victory in the UK trial, we believe the risk of the case to the business is now substantially reduced and given the strength of our trading position today we are looking positively further forward into the future. We have a strong business behind us, with leading metrics in our market, and a product roadmap that has the potential to enhance our global market opportunity long term.”

Analyst Briefing: 9.30am today, Tuesday 27 February 2024

An online briefing for Analysts will be hosted by James Barham, Chief Executive, and William Good, Chief Financial Officer, at 9.30am today Tuesday 27 March 2024 to review the results and prospects. Analysts wishing to attend should contact Walbrook PR on [email protected] or 020 7933 8780.

Investor Presentation: 3.00pm on Thursday 29 February 2024 (UK time)

The Directors will hold an investor presentation to cover the results and prospects at 3.00pm on Thursday 29 February 2023 (UK time).

The presentation will be hosted through the digital platform Investor Meet Company. Investors can sign up to Investor Meet Company and add to meet PCI-PAL PLC via the following link https://www.investormeetcompany.com/pci-pal-plc/register-investor. For those investors who have already registered and added to meet the Company, they will automatically be invited. 

Questions can be submitted pre-event to [email protected] or in real time during the presentation via the "Ask a Question" function. 

For further information, please contact:

About PCI Pal:

PCI Pal is a leading provider of Software-as-a-Service (“SaaS”) solutions that empower companies to take payments from their customers securely, adhere to strict industry governance, and remove their business from the significant risks posed by non-compliance and data loss. Our products secure payments and data in any business communications environment including voice, chat, social, email, and contact centre. We are integrated to, and resold by, some of the worlds’ leading business communications vendors, as well as major payment service providers.

The entirety of our product-base is available from our global cloud platform hosted in Amazon Web Services (“AWS”), with regional instances across EMEA, North America, and ANZ.