Xlmedia Regulatory News (XLM)

XLMedia PLC

("XLMedia" or "the Group" or "the Company")

Interim results for the six months ended 30 June 2016

Current trading remains strong with profit growth in line with expectations

XLMedia (AIM: XLM), a leading provider of digital performance marketing services, is pleased to announce its interim results for the six months ended 30 June 2016.

Financial highlights

· Revenues increased 39% to $51.2 million (H1 2015: $36.8 million) delivering another period of record revenues;

· Gross profit increased 47% to $27.0 million (H1 2015: $18.4 million); 

· Adjusted EBITDA increased 37% to $17.7 million (H1 2015: $12.9 million);

· Profit before tax up 20% to $15.8 million (H1 2015: $13.2 million);

· Interim dividend of $7.5 million or 3.8205 cent per share, an increase of 47% (H1 2016: 2.595 cent per share); and

· Strong balance sheet with $42.9 million cash and short term investments.

Operating highlights

· Continued development of our technology and in-house systems; DAUUP (EDM) awarded 'Facebook Marketing Partner' for Ad Technology;

· Established a new US subsidiary, enabling us to further develop our relationships with our US clients in this important market. The focus of this new subsidiary will be to rapidly increase our business in mobile apps and additional non-gambling verticals;

· Increased contribution from the publishing segment, as a result of strong organic growth in the English speaking market, changed revenue mix between the different segments ; and 

· Current trading remains strong and the Board is extremely confident in meeting profit expectations for the current year and beyond.

Ory Weihs, Chief Executive Officer of XLMedia, commented:

"We are proud to report another great six months of trading for the Group. During the first six months of the year we continued to develop the business and invest in our technology platform and mobile capabilities, which further underpin our key revenue and profit drivers. Dauup (EDM), was named Facebook Marketing Partner for ad technology, an important step which further strengthens our position and technological competitive advantage.

"We recently established a US subsidiary which will lead the Group's development in this important territory, with a key focus being mobile applications marketing. US mobile advertising growth is accelerating, and presence in this important territory will drive our growth in mobile apps and additional verticals.

"We believe we have established a strong foundation which, combined with our technology investments, we expect will drive the business to maximise the growth opportunity we see across our markets. We look forward to reporting on our continued progress."

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Business review

Since becoming a public company in March 2014, XLMedia has been focused on delivering growth through the successful implementation of its strategy. To that end, in the period, we achieved:

· significant progress in client diversification, with the Group's largest customer accounting for 7% of Group's revenues during first half of 2016;

· significant progress in geographic diversification with 33% of H1 2016 revenues from Scandinavia, 25% from Other European countries and 21% from North America; and

· diversification of our sector base with gambling accounting for 71% of H1 2016 revenues.

Management remains focused on further diversification which we believe will bring additional value for shareholders in the form of stability of revenues as well as additional new growing revenue streams to the Group.

We made significant progress with our technology, and our current suite of products include:

· Rampix - this is our platform for app marketing and user acquisition, which granted us the recognition as a Facebook Marketing Partner for ad tech;

· Palcon - this is our website management platform which enables us to manage over 2,000 websites efficiently while monitoring, analyzing and constantly improving performance;

· Phoenix - this is our operational platform, which enables us to manage our business partners and campaign in one unified system;

· Tracking tools - these follow the sales funnel from different sources on Company websites and paid media campaigns, enabling optimization of media campaigns at the segment level, as well as website yield management; and

· Business intelligence tools - integrated into all the systems that we have is our business intelligence tool which pulls and centralises data from thousands of advertiser and publisher accounts, up to the player level, aggregating all the information gathered in our 'big data' center, which we can analyse in order to optimise performance at all levels

During the first half of 2016 we invested $2.2 million in our technology and strongly believe that our advanced technology provides us with a significant competitive advantage from which we are able to drive growth. We will continue to invest in our technology to remain at the forefront of what is available and to enable us to capitalize on the opportunities it presents us with.

Acquisitions

We continue to evaluate and execute bolt on acquisitions of domains and websites, complementing our publishing asset base and further diversifying our portfolio. This year our primary focus is on assets in other European countries (non Scandinavia), mainly the UK and specializing in sports or non-gambling products. 

Business Segments review

By segment, the three divisions have performed strongly. We have seen a slight shift in the revenue mix from partner network to the higher margin publishing division as a result of strong organic growth in the English speaking markets. We expect this shift to continue as a result of two short term trends in the media and the network division as explained below.

Publishing

Publishing revenues grew 48% to $21.3 million (H1 2015: $14.4 million), a higher rate than had been anticipated during H1 2016. The growth was primarily organic, with some additions from new assets acquired during the second half of 2015 and beginning 2016.

We continued to develop our "Palcon" infrastructure to support the centralised management and to improve performance of our assets, with a focus on mobile performance.

During 2016 we invested $1.6 million in new websites and domains and we plan to continue buying and developing more assets to further drive growth.

Media

The demand for digital advertising remained strong and continues to grow. H1 2016 revenues grew 39% to $24.2 million (H1 2015: $17.5 million) and we believe our capabilities and know-how combined with our technology will enable us to drive growth rates going forward.

We remain focused on performance based revenue models with customers paying for performance only and avoiding the risk of applying funds to media campaigns that don't deliver an adequate return on investment ("ROI"). We use our expertise, in-house proprietary systems and trained staff and own funds to run thousands of simultaneous campaigns which yield positive ROI for us and for our customers.

In the very short term we anticipate a reduction in revenue from this segment due to decreased demand from a small number of media customers. We believe this is a temporal issue which will not impact the long term growth of this division. This change in the revenue contribution from the Media division will be more than offset by an increase in higher margin activity in the Group's publishing division and will have no impact on the Group's profitability.

Partner Network

Partner network revenues grew 16% to $5.6 million (H1 2015: $4.9 million). Whilst our partner network is not a core part of the Group's business we believe that it is complimentary and offers the Group the opportunity to provide marketing services which are not currently offered through our publishing and media networks.

As part of our ongoing business development and process enhancement activities, we have commenced a full review of our partners in this network, with a view to implementing more stringent sign up and operations criteria and where necessary ceasing activity with certain partners to improve overall quality. This review may lead to lower revenues in the short term; however, any impact on profit would be marginal given the low margins of this activity.  

Current Trading and Outlook

The business has established solid foundations for growth and continues to enhance and improve its offering, including a new US subsidiary to drive further growth in that territory. The Board is extremely confident of meeting profit expectations for the full year and has maintained its progressive dividend policy by declaring a dividend of $7.5 million or 0.0382 cents per share payable on 4 November 2016 to shareholders on the register at 7 October 2016. The ex-dividend date is 6 October 2016.

Financial review

The first half of 2016 has delivered another set of record revenues for the business. Revenues in the first six months of the year totaled $51.2 million, reflecting 39% growth compared to the same period last year.

Gross profit reached $27.0 million or 53% of revenues, representing 47% growth compared to last year (H1 2015: $18.4 million, 50%). In the first half of 2016 the media segment was the largest segment with 47% of revenues.

Operating expenses during the first six months of the year were $11.2 million, an increase of 51% compared to the same period last year (H1 2015: $7.4 million). During the first six months of 2015, we saw some delays in recruitment, which picked up later in FY 2015. The increase in costs is mainly attributable to staff and relevant overhead in all expenses: research and development, sales and marketing, general and administration.

Operating expenses included $1.1 million of research and development expenses, reflecting an increase of 50% compared to the same period last year (H1 2015: $0.7 million). These expenses are in addition to the increase of 106% in investments in technology and internal systems developed during the period of $2.2 million (H1 2015: $1.6 million). The Group expects to further enhance investment in technology as we see technology as a key driver to growth and profit for the coming years.

Adjusted EBITDA1 reached $17.7 million or 35% of revenues, reflecting an increase of 37% to the same period last year (H1 2015: $12.9 million, 35%).

Financial income, net for the first six months of the year was $0.1 million (H1 2015: $2.4 million). Last year's income of $2.4 million was attributed to the Company's dynamic hedging activity to mitigate material exposure to foreign currencies and does not reflect the ongoing business as this was a specific effect of the currencies fluctuations last year.

As a result of the high adjusted EBITDA as well as the financial gain from changes in exchange rates in 2015, profit before tax increased by 20% to $15.8 million (H1 2015: $13.2 million).

As of 30 June 2016 we had $42.9 million cash and short term investments compared to $42.6 million on December 31, 2015. The change in cash reflects an increase of $11.4 million provided by operating activity, offset by spending $5.9 million on investments mainly in technology and acquisitions and $4.8 million of dividends during the first half of 2016. Investments during the period include a payment of $2 million as final consideration for acquisition of a majority stake in Marmar Media.

Current assets as of 30 June 2016 were $61.2 million (31 Dec 2015: $60.9 million), and non-current assets reached $60.4 million (31 Dec 2015: $57.9 million). The increase in non-current assets is attributed mainly to investments in domains and websites of $1.6 million, as well as additions to our in-house technology (net of amortisation) of $1.0 million.

Total equity on 30 June 2016 reached $98.8 million, or 81% of total assets (2015: 75%), and with cash and short term investments of $42.9 million the Group is well positioned to continue executing its strategic plan.

1 Earnings Before interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization and adjusted to exclude share based payments and expenses related to EDM acquisition

The accompanying notes are an integral part of the interim condensed consolidated financial statements.

*) Lower than USD 1 thousand.

The accompanying notes are an integral part of the interim condensed consolidated financial statements.

The accompanying notes are an integral part of the interim condensed consolidated financial statements.

The accompanying notes are an integral part of the interim condensed consolidated financial statements.

The accompanying notes are an integral part of the interim condensed consolidated financial statements.

NOTE 1: GENERAL

XLMEDIA PLC and its subsidiaries (The Group) are an online performance marketing companies. The Group attracts paying users from multiple online and mobile channels and directs them to online businesses.

The Group attracts users through online marketing techniques (such as publications and advertisements) which are then directed, by the Group, to its customers in return for a share of the revenue generated by such user, a fee generated per user acquired, fixed fees or a hybrid of any of these three models.

For further information regarding online marketing and the Group's business segments, see Note 4.

NOTE 2: SIGNIFICANT ACCOUNTING POLICIES

a. Basis of preparation of the interim consolidated financial statements:

The interim condensed consolidated financial statements for the six months ended 30 June 2016 have been prepared in accordance with IAS 34, Interim Financial Reporting, as adopted by the European Union. The interim condensed consolidated financial statements do not include all the information and disclosures required in the annual financial statements, and should be read in conjunction with the Group's annual consolidated financial statements as at 31 December 2015.

The accounting policies applied in the preparation of the interim condensed consolidated financial statements are consistent with those followed in the preparation of the Group's consolidated annual financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2015.

b. Financial instruments:

The carrying amount of cash and cash equivalents, short-term investments, trade and other receivables, long-term investments and receivables, trade payables, other liabilities and account payables approximates their fair value du to short term maturity of those instruments.

NOTE 3: SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

(a) On 26 February 2016 the Company paid a dividend to its shareholders of USD 4.8 million (USD 0.025 per share).

(b) In March 2016, the Company granted to employees of the Group 1,481,856 options to purchase 1,481,856 Ordinary shares. The options will vest over four years from the grant date and are exercisable up to period of eight years from the date of grant.

The following table specifies the inputs used for the fair value measurement of the grant:

The total fair value of the options granted was estimated USD 414 thousands at the grant date (USD 0.28 per option)

NOTE 4: OPERATING SEGMENTS

(a) General:

The operating segments are identified on the basis of information that is reviewed by the chief operating decision maker ("CODM") to make decisions about resources to be allocated and assess its performance. Accordingly, for management purposes, the Group is organised into operating segments based on the products and services of the business units and has operating segments as follows:

Segment performance (segment profit) is evaluated based on revenues less direct operating costs.

Items that were not allocated are managed on a group basis.

 (b) Reporting on operating segments:

(c) Geographic information:

Revenues classified by geographical areas based on internet user location: