Vianet Grp Regulatory News (VNET)

Vianet Group plc

("Vianet" or the "Group")

Trading Update and Notice of Results

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 trading update ahead of the Group's preliminary results for the year ended 31 March 2018, which are expected to be released on Tuesday, 5 June 2018.

Trading for the second half of the year has been largely as anticipated and, as a result, the Group's full year profits will be broadly in line with market expectations and ahead of last year's outturn of £3.32 million. As such, the Board intends to recommend a maintained final dividend of 4.0 pence per share.

The Smart Machines division continues to deliver growth in connected devices and penetration into the European market. The integration of the recent Vendman acquisition and bedding in of the material contract win with a global coffee company are both going well, as is progress on increasing the proportion of recurring revenue as a percentage of new sales. Whilst Smart Machines revenue stream transition from capital sales to recurring annuity suppresses short term financial performance, it is providing greater visibility and quality of future earnings for this division.

The Smart Zones divisional contribution is slightly down year on year. However, investment in Pubco data analytics capability and its increased automation of transactional processes will help to sustain future contribution despite the challenges faced in its customers' core market of UK pub retailing.

James Dickson, Chairman, commented: "The Group will again deliver good year-on-year profit growth. Importantly, this has been achieved whilst shifting the balance of Smart Machines sales from capital to recurring annuity based income. The Group's medium to long term prospects are exciting, particularly for telemetry and payment solutions for the coffee vending market, where momentum is being boosted by good progress integrating the Vendman acquisition, and better visibility on delivery of the material contract win with a global coffee company."

An audio cast of the full year results presentation given by Stewart Darling (Chief Executive) and Mark Foster (Chief Finance Officer), will be released at 0700hrs on Tuesday, 5 June 2018 on the Group's website www.vianetplc.com with the link also being distributed by Yellow Jersey PR.

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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