Investment up to $6m in China

30 Apr 2008 07:02

Velti PLC30 April 2008 For Immediate Release WEDNESDAY, 30 April 2008 Velti plc Entry into China's rapidly growing mobile market; Continues global expansion with up to US$6 million investment in CASEE LONDON and BEIJING - Velti plc ("Velti" or "the Company"), a leading provider ofsoftware platforms, applications, and services for advertising agencies, mobileoperators and media groups, announces that, as part of its plans forinternational expansion, it is entering the Chinese market. Velti is investingUS$3 million in CASEE, China's largest mobile advertising exchange, in returnfor 33 per cent of the company. The Company also has warrants for a further 17per cent to take its holding to up to 50 per cent for an additional investmentof US$3 million. CASEE was founded in 2006 by a team with extensive experience in the Chinesemarket and is headquartered in Beijing (an office is shortly being establishedin Shanghai). It currently employs 25 people and is projected to grow to 40people by the end of the year. CASEE provides state-of-the-art tools andservices that create a marketplace between content publishers such as Yahoo,Sohu, Baidu and advertisers ranging from multinational companies such as Kodakand General Motors to local, small and medium-sized enterprises. Usingproprietary technology, it matches bids and offers with controlled targeting tomaximise the price received by over 2000 content publishers from their WAP sitesfrom advertisers. Its founders and board have extensive experience in the localmarket, having held senior executive positions at US-listed Chinese companieslike Sohu, Baidu and Linktone. CASEE serves more than 500 million ads everymonth to mobile phones in China and receives its revenues from advertisers. Alex Moukas, Velti's Chief Executive Officer, said: "Our investment in CASEE isin line with our strategy of supporting the global needs of our clients andbeing a leader in developing the mobile marketing channel. Partnering with CASEEgives Velti an early foothold in China's rapidly growing mobile market, ahead ofthe Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, as well as the capability to execute mobilemarketing campaigns for global brands in this key territory. While the effect ofthis investment is expected to be earnings per share neutral in 2008, we areconfident that China will contribute substantially to revenues and profits inthe future beyond." Xin Ye, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of CASEE, said: "The partnershipbetween Velti and CASEE will be extremely beneficial to both sides. We havecomplementary skills, experience and technologies as well as a common focus onthe mobile channel. Together, we will be well placed to build and maintain aleading position in the Chinese market." Through CASEE, Velti will have advanced mobile marketing execution and servicecapabilities in China. This will complement Velti's capabilities in Europe, theMiddle East, North America and other parts of Asia and make Velti the largestmobile marketing enabler globally. Velti will make available to CASEE its experience and expertise in mobilemarketing and advertising as well as its relationships with multinationalagencies and mobile network operators. This will include access to Ansible,Velti's mobile joint venture with Interpublic Group, which is likely to play avery active role in CASEE's expansion in China. Velti will also be able todeploy CASEE's mobile advertising exchange technology for use in campaigns toits clients outside China. The two companies will co-operate at product offering, development and strategiclevel to enhance each other's offerings. CASEE's technology of advanced WAP siteenablement capabilities is expected to have the potential to merge with Velti'smobile marketing platform, which enables more than 70 activities that lead toclear monetisation and return on objectives targeted by advertising campaigns. CASEE's world-class management team has extensive experience building andmanaging global technology companies in China. The team is led by Xin Ye, who is well known in China's Internet and ITindustries having held CTO positions at Sohu.com (NASDAQ: SOHU), China's leadingweb portal, Linktone (NASDAQ: LTON), a provider of wireless value-addedservices, and Censoft, Microsoft's first joint venture in China. He also spent10 years in product development, sales and business development with a number ofcompanies in Silicon Valley, including Tibco and Marimba. Kaiyang Liu is CASEE'sCTO and spent 4 years in senior technology roles at Marimba and Sun/Javasoft inthe US. Eric Xu is a Board member and founding investor in CASEE and is also aco-founder of Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU), China's leading search portal. Global brands are recognising the rapidly growing importance of the mobilechannel to marketing and advertising activities in China where there areapproximately 400 million mobile subscribers. According to IDC Asia/PacificMobile Devices CIS, in 2007 new mobile device shipments in Asia Pacificexcluding Japan totaled 366 million, an increase of 18 per cent on 2006 andmaking China and the surrounding region the world's fastest growing market formobile technology. IDC Asia also estimates that approximately 40 per cent ofmobile devices in China are data enabled compared to 10 per cent in the USA and20 per cent in Europe. According to Marbridge Consulting, total mobile advertising revenues in Chinaare forecast to be US$243 million in 2010. Chris Kaskavelis, Velti's COO added: "CASEE's business and management experiencemake an excellent fit with Velti's philosophy. China is an exciting market and,as it continues its rapid development and growth, we believe we will benefitsubstantially from Velti's "opt-in" approach to mobile marketing andadvertising. We are confident that China will contribute significantly to futuregrowth." END CONTACTS Velti:Alexandros Moukas, Chief Executive Officer +44 (0) 20 7633 5000Pantelis Papageorgiou, Director of FinanceClare Grant, Director of Marketing Bankside: +44 (0) 20 7367 8888Simon Bloomfield or Steve Liebmann RBC Capital Markets: +44 (0) 207 653 4667Sarah Wharry About Velti Velti's market-leading mobile marketing technology platform, coupled with itsexperience in the mobile advertising industry, enables clients around the worldto deliver an extensive range of highly targeted marketing campaigns. Withoperations in 18 countries, and a mobile marketing joint venture with theInterpublic group, a top global holding group of advertising agencies, Velti hasthe ability to reach through its platform an estimated 1.4 billion consumers. Velti's unique Mobile Marketing and Advertising Platform (version 4.0) managesthe full cycle of planning, execution and monitoring of multiple campaignsacross differing mobile formats and channels, offering customers more than 70mobile marketing and advertising templates, which can be managed from one userinterface. For more information, visit www.velti.com. About CASEE CASEE (Cellphone Ads Serving E-Exchange) is China's largest mobile advertisingmarketplace. With an advanced technology offering, CASEE provides a powerfulmobile ad marketplace platform with real-time reporting and highly efficienttargeting capabilities. CASEE allows advertisers to reach their customers on themobile Internet, and publishers to increase the value of their mobile sitesthrough advertising. CASEE offers both advertisers and publishers the ability totarget and personalize advertising in different provinces and cities. CASEE alsoallows advertisers to target by provinces, cities, phone brand, phone model, anduser behavior, using self-serve web tools with transparent and robust reporting. This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange