I-nexus Global. Regulatory News (INX)

5 December 2018

i-nexus Global plc

("i-nexus", the "Company" or the "Group")

Preliminary Results

i-nexus Global plc (AIM: INX), a provider of cloud-based Strategy Execution software solutions designed for the Global 5000, is pleased to provide its preliminary results for the year ended 30 September 2018.

Financial Highlights

· Group Revenue increased by 15% to £4.7m (2017: £4.1m)

· Loss before tax of £1.04m (2017: Loss £0.46m)

· Adjusted* EBITDA for the financial year of Loss £0.66m (2017: Loss £0.28m)

· Cash & cash equivalents as at 30 September 2018 of £6.94m (30 September 2017: £0.25m)

Operational Highlights

· Admitted to trading on AIM in June 2018, raising £10m before expenses

· Continued high levels of recurring revenue, representing 82% of total revenue (2017: 82%)

· Continued growth of the customer base, including entry into the UK public sector, with four new public sector clients

· Investment programme commenced immediately following IPO and has progressed to plan

· 26 key hires across many areas of the business, including domain experts, sales and marketing personnel and additional members of the development teams

· Opening of first international office in New York, to support growing US customer base

*After adjusting for the non-recurring administrative expenses incurred as a result of the AIM IPO (£0.18m) and share based payment expense (£0.03m)

Simon Crowther, Chief Executive, of i-nexus Global plc, commented: "Following a strong operational performance in the first half of FY18, the key highlight of the year was our successful admission to AIM in June and the platform this has provided the business to capitalise on the considerable market opportunity. With the support of our expanding investor base, i-nexus now has the funding to accelerate growth and take it into the next stage of its development, building on our market leading position in the emerging market for enterprise grade Hoshin-based Strategy Execution software.

"In taking our first steps as a public company, we have identified a clear path to enhance the size, scale and relevance of our business. The investment in growing our high calibre team and suite of products has laid the foundation for continued growth, which gives us grounds for optimism.  With an outstanding customer base, strong competitive position, large addressable market and strengthened operational teams, we look to the future with confidence."

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About i-nexus Group plc

i-nexus supports some of the largest global companies in running, improving and changing their businesses through the provision of a scalable, enterprise-grade, cloud-based Continuous Improvement ("CI") and Strategy Execution ("SE") software platform. The platform is in use at global blue-chip businesses, predominantly based across the US and Europe, helping customers execute key strategic goals throughout all levels and divisions of their organisations.

The Group's software supports Hoshin Kanri, a strategy development methodology first introduced in the 1960s in Japan and born out of lean, six sigma and operational improvement theory. Hoshin Kanri (directly translated as "direction execution") is a systematic planning, implementation and review methodology which, when implemented, aims to ensure that the strategic goals of a company are properly communicated to all employees and that they drive progress and action at every level of the business.

i-nexus is headquartered in Coventry, UK with a sales office in New York, and employs over 60 staff. 

CHAIRMAN'S STATEMENT

I am delighted to present i-nexus Global plc's first full year results as a public company.

On 21 June 2018 the Company's shares were admitted to trading on AIM, raising £10m before expenses. We are a small, nimble and fast-growing UK software business, supporting large companies' Operational Excellence and Strategy Execution programmes globally. The financial support that our new investors have provided has created a solid platform from which to grow our resources and ability to sell to, and support, our large global customers. The Board remains confident and excited about the Groups ability to grow within its chosen niche verticals.

Since the IPO, management has wasted no time in deploying capital and addressing the crucial areas of business development as laid out to investors, being to:

- Enhance the Company's go-to market capabilities

- Develop product capabilities

- Scale the Group's partner programme

Since admission, the Company has made good progress in these areas, whilst also detailing our plans for ongoing thought leadership initiatives and longer-term market and product initiatives. We believe our ability to grow with existing customers and create new opportunities will underpin our targeted growth strategy in the years to come.

In FY19 the focus has shifted to successfully executing on our growth strategy. We have implemented a larger more proactive marketing plan and have a significantly strengthened sales resource, led and driven by experienced industry professionals. We have a clearly defined Customer Success plan and now have sufficient resources to ensure we can build and strengthen increasingly deep strategic relationships with our customers, driving increased use of our software and facilitating their full adoption of Hoshin. In addition, we are complementing our direct sales capabilities with our developing indirect partner programme. We continue to invest in broadening our product range and during 2019 will focus on developing our Hoshin and user experience capabilities and strengthening our architecture and infrastructure.

The executive team has ensured we have skilled people in place across the business to deepen our customer relationships and successfully execute our strategic growth plan. The Board is comfortable with the quick but considered manner in which management has deployed capital and will continue to monitor both the Company's growth plans but also its consumption of cash.

FY18 was a seminal year in the development of i-nexus Global plc and none of it would have been possible without the commitment and capabilities of all our staff. Two long standing Board members stepped down at the IPO and I would like to take this opportunity to thank Kevin Douglas and Frank Bury for the support and advice they provided during their time on the Board. Nigel Halkes joined the Board before the IPO and I would like to thank him for his steady and considered advice. Finally, I would like to thank my other fellow directors and our longstanding and new staff for their unremitting commitment to the ongoing success of i-nexus Global plc.

The Board is confident about the future of the Company. i-nexus has the resources now to appropriately address the large growing market for its software. Much remains to be done, but our progress so far and the momentum we are generating allows me to look forward with confidence.

Richard Cunningham

Chairman

CEO'S STATEMENT

i-nexus is a provider of Strategy Execution software, delivering an enterprise ready, scalable solution to Global 5000 customers. Our SaaS software simplifies the management of vast operational and strategic complexity, providing actionable insights and ensuring that all levels of the business are aligned behind the same objectives.

Following a strong operational performance in the first half of FY18, the key highlight of the year was our successful admission to AIM in June and the platform this has provided the business for future growth. With the support of our expanding investor base, i-nexus now has the funding to accelerate growth and take it into the next stage of its development, building on our market leading position in the emerging market for enterprise grade Hoshin-based Strategy Execution software. Targeted investment has commenced across our operations and we are excited about the prospects for the year ahead and beyond.

Recognised revenues for the year increased 15% to £4.7 million (FY17: £4.1 million). Loss before tax increased to £1m (FY17: £0.5m) as we started to deploy funds and period end net cash increased to £6.9 million (FY17: £0.2m). Despite some weaker than expected pipeline conversion in Q3 of FY18, target Monthly Recurring Revenue ("MRR") returned towards more normalised levels in Q4 and we closed FY18 at an MRR run rate of £335k. We saw some excellent customer successes during the period, with 10 new customers added in the year. This growth included our entry into the UK public sector, securing four new public sector customers across the year, including University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust, Birmingham & Solihull Mental Health Foundation Trust and Network Rail. We have subsequently allocated a dedicated salesperson focused on increasing our penetration into this market.

Our Growth Strategy

In order to take advantage of our significant market opportunity, we have developed our own Hoshin Strategic plan, resulting in a Group strategy with the following themes:

· Scalable Sales & Marketing Cycle:

We are building an extensive calendar of marketing events and other initiatives to drive our pipeline of new opportunities. The recent investment in this and in our sales team has resulted in promising growth within the pipeline of opportunities.

· Cross and Upsell to existing customers:

All customers are at different levels of maturity in their journey to successful Strategy Execution, we characterise this journey as crawl, walk, run. As we guide our customers from crawl to run, we have many upsell opportunities to expand the implementation of our software. We also see cross-sell opportunities for those customers who have adopted the Hoshin Strategy Planning solution to the i-nexus Continuous Improvement solution, and vice versa.

· Working with Channel Partners:

Our channel strategy is in its early stages of development with a small number of established resellers and referral consulting partners. Interest from potential partners, however, is growing and we have begun to explore ways to capitalise on this opportunity as a key driver for the next stage in the Group's development.

· Strong Thought Leadership:

We have established our leading market position by promoting the development of industry best practices through the i-nexus StratEx Hub community - a best-practice resource tool with thousands of subscribers. We run and organise well attended consortium events hosted by both our customers and other companies to discuss strategy execution issues and experiences. These initiatives, in addition to more traditional sales channels, provide distinct additional routes to market, supporting traditional pipeline development.

· Product Innovation:

Our primary focus in the initial planning horizon is the simplification and standardisation of our software, making engagements easier and helping to accelerate growth. In addition, we see a long-term opportunity to build predictive analytics into the platform, utilising the vast quantities of data available to us.

· Target the Mid-Market:

We are currently targeting customers in the Global 5000, which have sufficient maturity and complexity to make the most of the i-nexus software. However, through standardisation and future simplification of its product, we intend to target the mid-market.

Investment into our people, processes and scalability to drive growth

The Placing which accompanied our IPO was significantly oversubscribed, with strong support from institutional investors, raising £10m pre-expenses and providing us with the funds to execute on our growth strategy.

The investment programme commenced immediately following the IPO and has progressed to plan, with 26 hires across many areas of the business, including client relationship managers, domain experts, sales and marketing personnel and additional members of the development teams. We have also begun the planned development work on our software and opened our first International office in New York, to support our growing US customer base.

Building the team

Everything starts with getting the right team in place. i-nexus will only fulfil its potential if we can attract and retain high quality senior management in all operational aspects of the business. We have made seven senior hires since the IPO, including an EVP of Sales and a Head of Marketing. Other key scaling hires include:

· Added two individuals into marketing, providing content and to support the sales team

· Doubling the sales team to six. They can now cover our key regions, customers and begin to generate their own leads to not be so dependent on marketing as the only source of leads

· The success team, responsible for customer adoption, retention and expansion, has increased by three to five, meaning we now have the capacity to embed a team member across all customer accounts, ensuring customer renewal and the unlocking of further opportunities

· We are investing in the organisation's processes and operations to support our ongoing expansion, particularly in the areas of Finance and HR

We have been delighted by the calibre of these new recruits, holding our first Company launch in early October, in order to ensure all the expanded team is aligned behind the new objectives for i-nexus.

Scaling marketing

We have two unique resources in terms of developing thought leadership and setting the agenda for Strategy Execution as outlined above. We are mobilising many initiatives to multiply activity in these areas.

Utilising our funds, we are also exploring and launching new marketing initiatives such as breakfast briefings and other market focussed events, with three having taken place since July 2018, in New Jersey, San Diego and Rotterdam. This activity will continue to ramp up through 2019.

Product Development

Another major area of focus has been our Development teams, where we have added a third and fourth team, enabling a potential tripling of our productivity which is critical to:

· work increasingly closely with our customers and should de-risk our product development strategy

· enhance our products to ensure that not only can they manage what are large and complex corporate processes

· ensure the solution is simple to deploy for both internal staff and partners

· facilitate cross-sell and up-sell opportunities

Development in the year focused on increasing the ease of use and competitive strength of our software, including: the introduction of the My World Dashboard, to present key information simply and graphically; work on the wider user interface to improve consistency and reduce duplication; incremental Hoshin functionality; and architectural development, primarily to increase the speed, efficiency and output of the product development process.

US Presence

The Group's target market is primarily the Global 5000 and, more specifically, the 2,800 companies in this list that are based in the USA and Europe. In October we opened a small office space in New York for our six new US hires. This is a key step for both scaling efficiently and being closer to one of our largest market opportunities.

Outlook

In taking our first steps as a public company, we have identified a clear path to enhance the size, scale and relevance of our business. The investment in growing our high calibre team and suite of products has laid the foundation for continued growth, which gives us grounds for optimism. Despite some higher than expected churn at the beginning of the current financial year, we are already seeing the benefit of our targeted investment with clear evidence of steady pipeline growth, in line with management expectations for the year.

With an outstanding customer base, strong competitive position, large addressable market and strengthened operational teams, we look to the future with confidence.

Simon Crowther

Chief Executive Officer

CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER'S REPORT

Reported revenue

Revenue increased by nearly 15% to £4.7m from £4.1m in the prior year. The Group signed 10 new customers (2017: 8) all under recurring contracts of at least one year in length, typically paid annually in advance. Revenue from recurring contracted software subscriptions was £3.84m (2017: £3.37m) and from associated professional services was £0.87m (2017: £0.75m).

Gross Margin

Gross margin in the year was £3.23m 68.4% (2017: £2.85m 69.4%) after considering Commission payable to the Group's business partners. There was a slight narrowing of margin as expected as the Company deploys the capital raised at IPO, but this is expected to improve as the operational benefits of these investments begin to feed through. Reported gross margin is the combined gross margin over both recurring software subscriptions and professional services.

Overheads

Overhead (defined as the aggregate of staff costs, other operating expenses but excluding those costs included in cost of sale) increased in the year from £3.2m to £4.1m. We have added ~£100k of monthly run rate cost to the Group since IPO, as planned.

Included in these overheads was £0.2m of non-recurring administrative expenses related to the IPO. The total of IPO costs were £1.4m, the balance was written off against the Share Premium account.

Interest expense rose by £37k on the previous year as we took on additional long-term debt ahead of the IPO to allow us to start our strategic plans.

Capitalised development costs amounted to £55k in the year. We expect a rapid scaling of this next year as the additional development capacity contributes to the Groups' products marketability.

The Groups Loss before taxation rose from £0.5m in 2017 to £1.0m.

Cash flow

The Group is in a strong financial position, with cash balances of £6.9m at 30 September 2018 (2017: £0.2m). Gross debt at 30th September was £0.7m (2017: £0.9m) of which £0.3m was payable within one year.

The Group experienced a net outflow of funds from operating activities of £1.7m (2017 inflow £0.4m). The Group had a cash outflow of £0.2m (2017 £0.2m) from the servicing of its debt finance and a net inflow of funds associated with the AIM IPO of £8.8m (2017:£nil).

The Group will continue to apply treasury and foreign currency exposure management policies to minimise both the cost of finance and our exposure to foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations.

Capital expenditure

The Group operates an asset light strategy and has low capital requirements, therefore expenditure on fixed assets is low at 3.7% of revenue (2017: 0.8%). Capital expenditure this year has increased due to an essential refresh of critical IT related assets to support our Infrastructure and as a result of new starters in the year.

Alyson Levett

Chief Financial Officer

Consolidated statement of financial position

As at 30 September 2018

Consolidated statement of changes in equity

Consolidated Statement of cash flows

For the year ending 30 September 2018

NOTES

1. Basis of preparation and accounting policies

The preliminary results for the year ended 30 September 2018 have been extracted from the un-audited consolidated financial statements, which were approved by the Board of Directors on 3 December 2018. The audited consolidated financial statements will be delivered to the Registrar of Companies once published by the end of December. 

Abridged financial information

The financial information in this announcement which was approved by the Board of Directors does not constitute the Company's statutory accounts for the year ended 30 September 2018. This is the first set of accounts since incorporation of the company on 20 April 2018.

This preliminary announcement has been prepared in accordance with the accounting policies under IFRS as adopted by the EU.

Whilst the financial information included in this preliminary announcement has been prepared in accordance with IFRS, this announcement does not itself contain sufficient information to comply with IFRS. This preliminary announcement constitutes a dissemination announcement in accordance with Section 6.3 of the Disclosures and Transparency Rules (DTR).

2. Revenue and segmental reporting

3. Adjusted EBITDA

4. Loss per share

The loss per share has been calculated using the loss for the year and the weighted average number

of ordinary shares outstanding during the year, as follows:

5. Borrowings

The Group borrowings are repayable as follows:

6. Share capital

Fully paid shares, which have a par value of £0.10, carry one vote per share and carry rights to a dividend.

Reconciliation of movement in shares during the year

7. Availability of Report and Accounts

The audited report and accounts for the year ended 30 September 2018 will be published and posted to shareholders in due course. Following publication a soft copy of the report and accounts will also be available to download from the Company's website, www.i-nexus.com.