VR Education reports solid progress with proprietary platform

(Sharecast News) - Virtual reality (VR) technology company VR Education updated the market on its proprietary software platform 'ENGAGE' on Wednesday, reporting that it had gained "strong traction" with customers and partners in the first quarter of 2021.
The AIM-traded firm said unaudited ENGAGE revenue for the first three months of the year was up 138% quarter-on-quarter to €0.4m (£0.34m), equivalent to two-thirds of the platform's full-year revenue in 2020 of €0.6m.

Since the beginning of the year, 28 new enterprise and institutional customers had been contracted to use ENGAGE, including the US State Department and global database platform provider MongoDB.

New clients were using ENGAGE for a number of purposes, the board said, including business collaboration, training, and events.

Additionally, the partnership agreed in 2020 with education technology provider VictoryXR was growing the ENGAGE user base with students from Morehouse College in the US, with three virtual classes for remote students being launched.

The group said it was also benefiting from increased investment in the ENGAGE sales organisation.

There was now seven dedicated personnel to target growth in global ENGAGE use, including in Asia, with "substantial progress" reported on plans to resource market development activities in North America.

Including Showcase revenue, VR Education said total unaudited group revenue for the first quarter of 2021 was €0.6m.

"ENGAGE usage continues to grow as more and more organisations worldwide see the benefits of the kind of immersive experience that ENGAGE offers versus traditional video-based communications tools such as Zoom and MS Teams," said chief executive officer David Whelan.

"We are focused on building on the ENGAGE client, user and revenue momentum we generated in 2020.

"Over the coming year, we will be targeting enterprise and institutional clients in our key geographies of Europe, Asia and North America and grow ENGAGE usage."

At 0935 BST, shares in VR Education Holdings were up 19.7% at 11.97p.