Xlmedia Regulatory News (XLM)

XLMedia PLC

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

Trading update

XLMedia (AIM: XLM), a leading provider of digital performance marketing, announces the following trading update for the year ending 31 December 2018.

Underlying trading in the year to date has been stable with the Group actively deciding to focus on higher margin business and ceasing certain lower margin media buying activities. The Group has also seen some impact from regulatory changes, namely the closure of the Australian market at the end of 2017 in addition to uncertainty regarding the regulatory status of certain European markets during 2018. These regulatory changes have triggered a re-alignment in how operators and marketers can work which should lead to a clearer and more functional environment. There has also been some reduction in SEO performance in few specific territories.

As a result of these factors, the Board now expects to report lower revenues than expected of circa US $130 million with marginally lower adjusted EBITDA1 compared to the prior year, for the current financial year, with a corresponding impact on profit before tax.

The Board however is pleased to report that the recently acquired personal finance assets continue to perform well and expects total publishing revenues in this sector to continue to grow as a proportion of overall Group publishing revenues during 2018.

Elsewhere across the business an accelerated effort to increase our reach whilst adding new channels, markets and products is currently being undertaken in an effort to optimise performance and Group diversification. Furthermore, with the US Supreme Court repealing the ban on sports betting last month, we have accelerated our efforts to ensure we are well positioned to service those operators who will be active in the market, although we believe its positive effects will only be felt in the medium to long term

In January 2018, XLMedia raised $43.6 million in order to support further investment in the business and fund additional acquisition led growth. Since then the Group has acquired Whichbingo, in April 2018, as well as additional US personal finance websites. All of these assets are currently being integrated into the Group as we seek to leverage synergy benefits and improve the performance of these assets as they are integrated and migrated onto our Palcon proprietary platform.

The Group currently has a solid pipeline of acquisitions targets under various stages of evaluation and the Board remains optimistic of completing further transactions within 2018.

As in previous years, the Board expects to issue a pre-close trading statement in July and re-affirms its stated dividend policy of returning at least 50 per cent. of net profits to shareholders by way of dividend payments.

1 - Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization adjusted to exclude share based payments

The information contained within this announcement is deemed to constitute inside information as stipulated under the Market Abuse Regulation (EU) No. 596/2014. Upon the publication of this announcement, this inside information is now considered to be in the public domain. 

The person responsible for the release of this announcement is Mr. Yehuda Dahan, Group CFO.

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