Pci-pal Regulatory News (PCIP)

PCI-PAL PLC

("PCI Pal", "the Company" or "the Group")

Trading Update & Notice of Results

Analyst Briefing & Investor Presentation

Stronger than anticipated trading with significant revenue growth

PCI-PAL PLC (AIM: PCIP), the global cloud provider of secure payment solutions for business communications, announces a trading update for the six months to 31 December 2021.

The Board is pleased to report an excellent first half of the year. All of the Group's key metrics are either at or ahead of management expectations, and as a result, the Group anticipates that revenue and losses before tax will now be better than the current market expectations for the full year.

In the first six months, revenue has increased 72% year-on-year to £5.4 million, reflecting the strength of PCI Pal's channel-focused, subscription-based revenue model. The Group has also grown its key indicator of future recurring revenues, Total Annual Contract Value ("TACV1"), by 37% to £11.4 million (2020: £8.3 million). Driving this increase is the new business ACV2 signed in the period of £1.8 million (2020: £1.7 million), with 81% of such contracts signed through our reseller partners (2020: 74%).

Adding to this revenue growth is the Company's performance against the key SaaS metrics associated with its Customer Success function. PCI Pal is pleased to report that its positive Net Revenue Retention ("NRR3"), for its AWS platform, has increased to 120% (30 June 2021: 111%), which has included a number of expansion sales to several enterprise-sized customers. Additionally, customer Churn on the platform has further improved to just 3.4% (30 June 2021: 6.7%).

The strong trading performance has enabled the Group to maintain cash balances at £5.5 million (30 June 2021: £7.5 million).

Proceedings in relation to the alleged patent infringement being made against the Company are ongoing and the Company is continuing to work towards an outcome that it believes will best benefit the business.

Commenting on progress in the period, James Barham, Chief Executive Officer of PCI Pal, said:

"We have enjoyed an excellent performance in the first half of the year. Demand for our market leading cloud services continues to gather pace as a result of our well-established and growing partner eco-system; our targeted, account-based direct sales activity; and the strong early results from our increased focus on Customer Success which is driving NRR and Churn rates into the top quartile for B2B SaaS benchmarks.

"Furthermore, we have made solid progress towards our growth plans for the year. Despite the universal hiring challenges faced by all companies, we have successfully expanded our team with key strategic hires across two new geographies of Canada and Australia, as well as expanding our team in the US and across core business functions in the UK such as Product Development and Engineering. At the same time our employee retention rates have remained encouragingly very high.

"With the strength of trading shown to date, and a growing pipeline and partner eco-system, we now anticipate that the Group will exceed its current market revenue expectations, resulting in a reduced loss before tax for the financial year. The Board remains confident in the longer-term outlook for the Group and continues to invest in its ambitious growth strategy."

Notice of Results:

PCI Pal expects to announce its Interim Results on Tuesday 1 March 2022.

Analyst Briefing: 9.30am on Tuesday 1 March 2022

An online briefing for Analysts will be hosted by James Barham, Chief Executive, and William Good, Chief Financial Officer, at 9.30am on Tuesday 1 March 2022 to review the results and prospects. Analysts wishing to attend should contact Walbrook PR on pcipal@walbrookpr.com or 020 7933 8780.

Investor Presentation: 3.00pm on Thursday 3 March 2022

The Directors will hold an investor presentation to cover the results and prospects at 3.00pm (UK time) on Thursday 3 March 2022.

The presentation will be hosted through the digital platform Investor Meet Company. Investors can sign up to Investor Meet Company and add to meet PCI-PAL PLC via the following link https://www.investormeetcompany.com/pci-pal-plc/register-investor. For those investors who have already registered and added to meet the Company, they will automatically be invited. 

Questions can be submitted pre-event to pcipal@walbrookpr.com or in real time during the presentation via the "Ask a Question" function. 

1 TACV is the total expected annual recurring revenue from all contracted customers, whether invoiced and included in deferred revenue or still to be deployed and/or invoiced.

2 ACV is the contracted annual recurring licence revenue component of the contract.

3 AWS platform net retention rate is calculated using the opening total value of deployed contracts at the start of the period less the ACV of lost deployed contracts in the period plus the ACV of upsold contracts signed in the period all divided by the opening total value of deployed contracts at the start of the period.

For further information, please contact:

This announcement contains inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of the Market Abuse Regulation (EU) 596/2014 as it forms part of UK domestic law by virtue of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 ("MAR"), and is disclosed in accordance with the company's obligations under Article 17 of MAR.

About PCI Pal:

PCI Pal is a leading provider of Software-as-a-Service ("SaaS") solutions that empower companies to take payments from their customers securely, adhere to strict industry governance, and remove their business from the significant risks posed by non-compliance and data loss. Our products secure payments and data in any business communications environment including voice, chat, social, email, and contact centre. We are integrated to, and resold by, some of the worlds' leading business communications vendors, as well as major payment service providers.

The entirety of our product-base is available from our global cloud platform hosted in Amazon Web Services ("AWS"), with regional instances across EMEA, North America, and ANZ.

For more information visit www.pcipal.com or follow the team on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pci-pal/