Big Sofa (AIM:BST), an international video analytics provider to the consumer insight industry, announces results for the six months ended 30 June 2019.
Financial Highlights
· Revenues grew by 78% to £1,072,000 (H1 2018: £602,000)
· Work commissioned as at 30 June 2019 was approximately £1.7m (H1 2018: £1m), equal to the total revenue delivered in FY2018, and represents a 62% increase on commissions at the same time in the prior year
· Commissioned work not yet recognised as at 30 June 2019 was approximately £0.6m (H1 2018: £0.4m), providing increased visibility over revenues to be recognised in H2
· Gross profit increased by 81% to £690,000 (H1 2018: £382,000); Gross margin increased 1% to 64%
· Administrative expenses reduced by 20% to £1.8m (H1 2018: £2.3m) as a result of the programme of annualised cost savings and technology efficiencies initiated in Q4 2018
· Loss for the period reduced 45% to £1.0m (H1 2018: £1.8m)
· Share subscription raised gross proceeds of £1 million in April 2019
Operational Highlights
· Repeat work undertaken for customers including Ipsos, Procter & Gamble and a large US-based multinational food and beverage company
· Subscription renewals by 84.51˚, Target Corporation, British Airways and Pernod Ricard
· New project work for a global US-based clothing manufacturer and retailer, worth more than $250,000
· New MSA wins and initial project commissions with a global technology company based on the West Coast of the US and a global energy storage brand
· Growing traction with Ipsos across a number of different global service lines; revenue from Ipsos grew by more than 250% to £0.35m (H1 2018: £0.1m) which accounted for 32% of revenues (H1 2018: 16%); launch of co-branded behavioural insight products
· Completed a second project with a large global data company and an initial project for Procter & Gamble involving the automated extraction of data from video footage at scale, pushing forward the Company’s AI and machine learning roadmap
· Successful platform integrations into customer knowledge management systems and complementary technology platforms to facilitate deeper strategic integration at the partner or client level:
o First Stop Data Shop – system used by Procter & Gamble
o KnowledgeHound – technology platform for quantitative data and research
o Ipsos – ongoing integrations across key service lines
· Ongoing platform improvements to stability, scalability, ingestion capacity, machine learning capability and user experience
· Expanded global server-storage and processing capability to enable the platform to operate seamlessly and flexibly across the globe.
· Retained ISO27001 status and maintained GDPR-compliance
Post Period-End Highlights
· Awarded a service agreement with a second global technology company based on the West Coast of the US, along with an initial commission under that service agreement.
Kirsty Fuller, Chief Executive Officer, commented:
“We have made considerable progress in the first half: delivering significant revenue growth from our growing global client base at a higher margin on a smaller cost base.
Our client product offering has enabled us to embed ourselves further within Ipsos, our largest client and shareholder, and acquire new global brand-clients. Significantly, some of these new clients are global technology and data companies allowing us to demonstrate the applications of our proprietary technology platform beyond the insight sector and to open-up large new markets for Big Sofa Technologies, which forms a key part of our long-term strategy.
The focussed technological development that we have undertaken puts us in a strong position to continue to drive innovation and analysis of video data at scale across a number of sectors.”
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