Trading Update and Notice of Results

RNS Number : 9508T

Vianet Group PLC

26 March 2019

 

For immediate release

26 March 2019

Vianet Group plc

("Vianet" or the "Group")

Trading Update and Notice of 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 ahead of the Group's preliminary results for the year ended 31 March 2019, which are expected to be released on Tuesday, 4 June 2019.

Trading for the second half of the year has been largely as anticipated and, as a result, the Group's full year profits will be in line with market expectations and ahead of last year's outturn of £3.62 million.   As such, the Board intends to recommend a maintained final dividend of 4.0 pence per share.

The Smart Machines division, including the successfully integrated Vendman business, continues to deliver strong growth in connected devices, with increased penetration helped by the transition of capital sales elements to a recurring sales model.  Whilst reduced capital sales suppresses short term financial performance, these strong contracted recurring revenues provide greater visibility and higher quality of future earnings.

The Smart Zones divisional contribution is slightly down year on year, with the impact of pub closures being partially offset by transactional process cost savings and system upgrades for customers.

James Dickson, Chairman, commented: "We are pleased to deliver good year-on-year profit growth again and it is notable that this has been achieved whilst shifting the focus within Smart Machines from capital to recurring annuity based sales.  The successful integration of Vendman has boosted momentum and we have seen good growth in connections for telemetry and contactless payment solutions for both the coffee vending, and snack and can vending markets."

An audio cast of the full year results presentation given by Stewart Darling (Chief Executive) and Mark Foster (Chief Finance Officer), will be released at 0700hrs on Tuesday, 4 June 2019 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 / Cameron MacRitchie	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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