Trading Update and Notice of Interim Results

RNS Number : 1159E

Vianet Group PLC

16 October 2018

 

	16 October 2018

Vianet Group plc

("Vianet" or the "Group")

Trading Update and Notice of Interim Results

Vianet Group plc (AIM: VNET), the international provider of actionable data and business insight through devices connected to its Internet of Things ("IOT") platform, today provides the following trading update and notifies that it will release its results for the half year ended 30 September 2018 on Tuesday, 4 December 2018.

Trading for the first half of the current financial year is ahead of the same period last year with the growth in operating profit being in line with market expectations.  The Board intends to maintain the interim dividend of 1.7 pence per share.

The Smart Machines division has delivered a strong year on year increase in the number of connected devices deployed.  We have made particularly good progress with the integration of Vendman and early stage success in transforming c 200,000 Vendman mobile connections to higher value Smart Machines connections is validating our strategic approach and opening up attractive cross selling opportunities.    

Helped by investment in Pubco data analytics capability and its increased automation of transactional processes, the Smart Zones division H1 contribution was satisfactory.   This performance was achieved despite delays due to Pubco corporate activity and our managed compliance service being held back by the UK beer supply chain being adversely impacted by the Europe wide shortage of CO2 gas over the summer months.

James Dickson, Chairman, commented:  "The team continues to make good commercial progress, particularly with our telemetry and payment solutions for the coffee vending market, where momentum is being boosted by good progress integrating the Vendman acquisition.  Vianet's medium to long term prospects are exciting as we are increasingly demonstrating that our strategy of leveraging the power of our cutting edge technology to bring game changing business insight to our customers is the right one."  

An audio cast of the H1 results presentation given by Stewart Darling (Chief Executive) and Mark Foster (Chief Finance Officer), will be released at 0700hrs on Tuesday, 4 December 2018 on the Group's website www.vianetplc.com with the link also being distributed by Yellow Jersey PR.

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Enquiries:

Vianet Group plc
James Dickson, Chairman	Tel: [phone]
[e-mail]	www.vianetplc.com

Cenkos Securities plc
Stephen Keys / Camilla Hume	Tel: [phone]
	www.cenkos.com

Media enquiries:

Yellow Jersey PR
Sarah Hollins Henry Wilkinson [e-mail]	Tel: [phone]             Tel: [phone] www.yellowjerseypr.com

About Vianet

Vianet Group is a leading provider of actionable management information and business insight created through combining data from our smart Internet of Things ('IOT') solutions and external information sources.

Since Admission to AIM in 2006, the Group has grown from its core beer monitoring business both organically and through strategic acquisitions to widen its offering and also develop new businesses, especially in vending telemetry and contactless payment solutions particularly for the premium coffee sector.

Servicing over 300 customers across the world and rendering live data to our IOT platform from over 250,000 connected machines daily, Vianet is one of the largest business to business (b2b) connected solutions providers in Europe with established long term relationships with blue chip customers and growing recurring revenues which are over 85% of our total revenues.

In our Smart Machines Division we connect a single data gathering device with its own on-board communication capability to a customer's asset or system.  The device then sends data back via our IOT platform to cloud based servers.  The technology was originally developed for automated retailing machines, however the flexibility and functionality of the device means the technology can be applied to practically any machine which has the capability to output data.  The device is also used to connect our contactless payment solution and communicate payment terms to our cloud based payment services providers where that application is also required.

The Smart Zones Division is where we connect multiple data gathering devices into one or more systems or assets with the data from those devices being communicated back to our IOT platform and cloud based servers via a single 3G communications hub.  The technology was originally developed for flow monitoring devices, temperature sensors, and asset management in drinks retailing but practically any data gathering device with a digital output could be connected to the communications hub where required such as gaming machines, utilities management and EPOS.

For further information, please visit www.vianetplc.com

 

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