RE: IC3 Mar 2019 01:04
A win-win situation
The great thing about Bango Marketplace is that the company profits from both the app developer and the mobile payment provider. The customer segment is effectively leased by Bango to the developer for a limited period and for a specified use. For instance, a small segment used for a trial may cost $1,000 per day, whereas a segment of 1m users might be leased for tens of thousands of dollars over a one-month period.
Furthermore, there is a strong incentive for MNOs and payment providers to upgrade to Bango’s platform so that they can safely and securely monetise the vast amount of data they are holding on their customers in ways that were previously impossible. This creates an additional revenue stream, and boosts both app store sales and end user spend (EUS).
I would stress that Bango Marketplace complies with GDPR and other relevant data regulations, specifically that all campaigns run by advertisers need to comply with local laws and regulations; MNOs and other Bango partners manage permissions from the users including opt-outs, updates and rights of exclusion; and the major marketing platforms fed with data from Bango (Google, Facebook, Line etc) manage user preferences, opt-outs etc relating to ad placement on their platforms.
So, by building on its existing relationships with mobile operators, taking into account the revenue earned from early adopters, Bango’s management expects Bango Marketplace to contribute materially to revenues in 2019, alongside ongoing growth in its payment business and from the 2018 acquisition of Audiens, a developer of a cloud-based platform that collects and analyses valuable consumer data. Moreover, the cloud-based architecture supporting the new platform is highly scaleable and built to handle data related to high transaction volumes.
So why the weak share price?
Bango’s shares have drifted since my last article in the autumn and are back at my original entry level ('Bang on the money', 26 September 2016). This is mainly because the company revealed that although it turned cash profitable in the final quarter of 2018 – and even though EUS on which it takes a small fee more than doubled to in excess of £550m in 2018 – the decision to take revenue on several new contracts for subscription services as long-term higher-value annuity revenues rather than one-off upfront fees meant that it will not be cash profitable for the year as a whole.
Analyst Ian McInally at house broker Cenkos Securities now expects Bango to report a cash loss of £1m for 2018, rather than a £1m profit. He has also reined in his 2019 forecasts slightly and predicts a cash profit of £7m, pre-tax profit of £4.4m (from £5.6m previously) and earnings per share (EPS) of 6.3p. This is based on EUS doubling for the fifth consecutive year to £1.29bn, which also supports a doubling of the year-end net cash position from £3.5m to £8.6m, a sum worth 12p a share. On this basis, the shares are rated on a cash-a