Vianet Grp Regulatory News (VNET)

Vianet Group plc

("Vianet" or the "Group")

Business Update

Vianet Group plc (AIM: VNET), the international provider of actionable data and business insight through devices connected to its Internet of Things ("IOT") platform, today provides the following business update.

Trading for the first four months of 2020 financial year has been as anticipated with the Group being on course to meet market expectations.

The Group's Smart Machines division has successfully concluded negotiations on three long-term contracts with leading vending operators. The combined contracts for 20,000 units will generate in the region of £10 million of revenue over the three to five year contract terms, which further underpins the growth of Smart Machines.

Craig Brocklehurst, currently Commercial Operations Director, has been appointed to head up the Group's Smart Zones division. This follows the forthcoming departure of Steve Alton who was recently appointed Chief Executive of pub industry body, the British Institute of Innkeeping.

James Dickson, Chairman of Vianet commented: "We are pleased with the contract wins, which are evidence of the Group's positive start to the year. The Group also congratulates Craig on his appointment to head up Smart Zones, replacing Steve Alton who was recently appointed Chief Executive of pub industry body, the British Institute of Innkeeping. We have no doubt that Steve's draught beer quality expertise and insight make him ideally suited for his new role and he leaves with our best wishes."

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About Vianet

Vianet Group is a leading provider of actionable management information and business insight created through combining data from our smart Internet of Things ('IOT') solutions and external information sources.

Since Admission to AIM in 2006, the Group has grown from its core beer monitoring business both organically and through strategic acquisitions to widen its offering and also develop new businesses, especially in vending telemetry and contactless payment solutions particularly for the premium coffee sector.

Servicing over 300 customers across the world and rendering live data to our IOT platform from over 250,000 connected machines daily, Vianet is one of the largest business to business (b2b) connected solutions providers in Europe with established long term relationships with blue chip customers and growing recurring revenues which are over 85% of our total revenues. 

In our Smart Machines Division we connect a single data gathering device with its own on-board communication capability to a customer's asset or system. The device then sends data back via our IOT platform to cloud based servers. The technology was originally developed for automated retailing machines, however the flexibility and functionality of the device means the technology can be applied to practically any machine which has the capability to output data. The device is also used to connect our contactless payment solution and communicate payment terms to our cloud based payment services providers where that application is also required.

The Smart Zones Division is where we connect multiple data gathering devices into one or more systems or assets with the data from those devices being communicated back to our IOT platform and cloud based servers via a single 3G communications hub. The technology was originally developed for flow monitoring devices, temperature sensors, and asset management in drinks retailing but practically any data gathering device with a digital output could be connected to the communications hub where required such as gaming machines, utilities management and EPOS.

For further information, please visit www.vianetplc.com