CALL.L Share News (CALL)

(Sharecast News) - Integrated communications company CloudCall updated the market on Monday, reporting that trading for the year so far was in line with its expectations.
The AIM-traded firm, which was holding its annual general meeting, said the 'deep V' recovery it saw in the second half of 2020 had continued into 2021, with sales activity strengthening across all territories.

Chief executive officer Simon Cleaver said the recruitment sector - the mainstay of its target market - had enjoyed a "particularly powerful" recovery with around 70% of recruitment firms expecting to grow revenues in 2021.

"This remarkable recovery is one of the factors behind the increased new customer wins and additional orders from existing customers that we have witnessed since the beginning of the year," Cleaver said.

"With both new business sales and upsells now running above pre-pandemic levels, revenue and platform usage is climbing steadily so that monthly recurring revenue, SMS and voice minutes are all at record highs and net renewal rates are back above 100%.

"The other factor that's helping sales and bodes well for the future, is home working."

Simon Cleaver said remote and hybrid working practices were "here to stay", and were a considerable contributor to businesses accelerating the adoption of products like CloudCall's, to help manage remote staff.

He added that CloudCall's ability to link communications and customer relationship management platforms was "particularly relevant" now.

"We continue to focus on expanding our addressable market by pursuing additional customer relationship management partnerships, and are particularly excited by the level of engagement with Propertybase, taking us squarely into the real estate vertical.

"With a potential target market of more than 200,000 users, we are fully focused on ensuring that our integration is built with customer needs front and center and we are about to embark on a beta program to ensure this is the case before scaling the commercial launch in a few months' time."

Operating costs were tracking in line with the firm's previous expectations for 2021 with operational expense growth of around 11%, adding back the £1.3m of one-time Covid-190related savings in 2020.

Cleaver said the company was still focusing on its core financial objective to drive revenue growth of about 18% to at least £14m in 2021.

"Furthermore, in 2022 we believe we can achieve revenue growth of 25% to £17.5m, whilst limiting operating costs growth to 12%, and are still targeting EBITDA break-even during 2023," he said.

"Our ambition remains to achieve a £50m revenue run-rate during 2026."

At 1144 BST, shares in CloudCall Group were up 4.57% at 72.15p.