Last checked at 25 Jul 2016 07:00
25th July 2016
Mobile Streams plc ("Mobile Streams" or the "Company")
Full Year Trading Update
Mobile Streams PLC (AIM: MOS), the emerging markets focused mobile media company, provides an update to its shareholders on its unaudited financial and business performance for the 12 months ended 30th June 2016:
· Revenues of approximately £12.5m (12 months to end of June 2015: £29.1m)
· Small EBITDA* loss (12 months to end of June 2015: profit of £1.1m)
· Cash of £1.3m, with no debt (12 months to end June 2015: £2.1m)
Commenting, Simon Buckingham, CEO said:
"Mobile Streams has focused on three main objectives in its recent business trading: expansion into India, stabilisation of its Latin American business primarily in Argentina and preservation of its cash balances. Generally, we have sought to invest the profits from our Argentine operations into developing the India business whilst seeking to maintain cash balances around the current levels. In Argentina, revenues in the last financial year were in part adversely impacted by the devaluation of the Argentine peso in December 2015 as well as a wider slowdown in the mobile subscription business in the local market.
In India, Mobile Streams India Private Limited was founded in October 2015 to enable Mobile Streams to sign agreements with Indian mobile network operators (MNOs), device manufacturers (OEM) and other third parties.
As per the strategy in Latin America, the focus is very much on the recurrent revenue generating subscription service in India, with daily and weekly packages both being trialled. In February 2016, we launched our Mobilegaming.com service with the top three Indian mobile operators with marketing campaigns coordinated by the same team responsible for the continued success we have had in the Latin America region over the past several years. There are currently several thousand active subscribers to these services.
In parallel to the mobile operator billing relationships, we have signed a distribution agreement with a local OEM handset manufacturer and are pursuing others with a goal to increase our site traffic, while reducing our customer acquisition costs, which is key to building our margins.
Looking ahead to the remainder of 2016 and beyond, our primary objectives are to secure mobile billing with the leading seven or eight mobile operators, progressively increase marketing spend to grow the subscriber base, enhance our content and service offer by partnering with local Indian companies and launching our browser based (utilising HTML5) games service to become the leading destination for games in India.
The Company sees potential for browser based gaming in both Latin America and India. This HTML5 content works well across all devices including Android, Apple, Tizen and Windows Phone. Devices in emerging markets often have limited memory capable to store downloadable applications so browser based gaming is attractive in the region. Browser based content is not available from Google Play and the App Store, providing differentiation from these competing offerings.
The Indian mobile market is growing rapidly, the entrance of Reliance Jio 4G network into the market this year and the upcoming spectrum auction means the primary obstacle of poor data connectivity is being addressed. With India already being the second largest smartphone market, despite relatively low smart device penetration, we are confident that Mobile Streams is well placed to deliver solid returns for investors over the next few years.
We look forward to updating shareholders with our progress at our final audited results which we expect to report in October."
* EBITDA is defined as earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortization and share-based compensation.
Enquires:
Mobile Streams
+1 347 669 9068
Simon Buckingham, Chief Executive Officer
Enrique Benasso, Chief Financial Officer
N+1 Singer (Nominated Adviser and Broker)
+44 (0)20 7496 3000
Nic Hellyer
Alex Price