28 September 2023

Mobile Tornado Group plc

("Mobile Tornado", the "Company" or the "Group")

Half Yearly Report

Mobile Tornado (AIM: MBT), a leading provider of resource management mobile solutions to the enterprise market, announces its unaudited results for the six-month period to 30 June 2023.

Financial highlights

·              Total revenue increased by 14% to £1.26m (H1 2022: £1.10m)

o  Recurring revenues increased by 3% to £0.96m (H1 2022: £0.93m)

o  Non-recurring revenues* increased by 70% to £0.29m (H1 2022: £0.17m)

·              Operating expenses increased by 1% to £1.28m (H1 2022: £1.28m)

·              Adjusted EBITDA** loss of £0.16m (H1 2022: £0.21m)

·              Group operating loss for the period decreased to £0.14m (H1 2022: £0.45m) - impacted by exchange differences of £0.10m gain (H1 2022: £0.15m loss)

·              Loss before tax of £0.53m (H1 2022: £0.78m)

·              Basic loss per share of 0.14p (H1 2022: 0.20p)

·              Net cash outflow from operating activities of £0.28m (H1 2022: £0.02m inflow)                   

·              Net debt at 30 June 2023 of £10.43m (H1 2022: £10.03m)

·              Cash and cash equivalents of £0.05m (30 June 2022: £0.12m)

*Non-recurring revenues comprising installation fees, hardware, professional services and capex license fees

**Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortisation, exceptional items and excluding exchange differences

Operating Highlights

·              Increased investment in business development activities to capitalize on strength of our technical solution. Post 2022 year end fundraise was completed to support this scale up

·              Landmark push-to-talk over cellular ("PoC") deal concluded with Leeds Bradford Airport

·              Extension to agreement with our existing partner in South Africa which will see us become an exclusive reseller of their personnel management platform

Jeremy Fenn, Chairman and acting CEO of Mobile Tornado, said: "The Company has for some time been a key player in the PTToC market, with a presence in Africa, South America and Europe. Our solution meets the mission-critical communication needs of our customers, and is characterised by a number of key differentiators, such as seamless transition, market-leading group sizes, a unique dispatcher console, and highly efficient data utilization. These features continue to set us apart from our competitors and allow us to deliver market leading performance to our partners and customers.

"The process of building a much deeper and wider business development operation commenced during the first half of the year and has made great progress. As a result, we have begun to open up new markets in the USA, parts of Asia and the Middle East. Physical attendance at trade shows and a more sophisticated PR strategy is generating significant inbound interest across many international markets. As previously mentioned, we have strengthened our sales teams to handle this increased activity and are now in the process of building much deeper and better quality sales pipelines.

"Despite a challenging economic environment, the Board are confident that our solution offers quality and good value, particularly when compared to the traditional radio platforms. We are building a much wider partner network and are confident that the developing sales pipeline will convert into new customers in due course. At the same time, we are working with our partners to develop bespoke solutions for key verticals which will provide further opportunity as we look to push those solutions into the wider partner network."

Enquiries:

Financial results

Total turnover in the six-month period to 30 June 2023 increased by 14% to £1.26m (H1 2022: £1.10m). Recurring revenues increased by 3% to £0.96m (H1 2022: £0.93m).

Non-recurring revenues, comprising installation fees, hardware, professional services and capex license fees increased by 70% to £0.29m (H1 2022: £0.17m). Gross profit increased by 6% to £1.13m (H1 2022: £1.07m).

Our underlying total operating cost-base remained largely unchanged over the comparative period, increasing by 1% to £1.28m (H1 2022: £1.28m). Due to the annual revaluation of certain financial liabilities on the balance sheet, the Group reported a currency translational gain of £0.10m (H1 2022: £0.15m loss) arising principally from the appreciation of Sterling against the US Dollar compared to the start of the period. As a result of the above, the loss after tax for the period decreased to £0.56m (H1 2022: Loss of £0.76m).

The Group reported a net cash outflow from operating activities during the period of £0.28m (H1 2022: £0.02m inflow). At 30 June 2023, the Group had £0.05m cash at bank (30 June 2022: £0.12m) and net debt of £10.43m (30 June 2022: £10.03m).

Review of operations

The Board are pleased to report a robust set of financial results for the first six months of the year. A small increase in the recurring revenue stream illustrates the high-quality customer base we have established, and the 70% uplift in non-recurring revenues reflects the renewals on existing capex based license deals. As highlighted earlier in the year, the Board is now focused on delivering a significantly enhanced business development operation to build out a much wider partner base, and ultimately generate a material uplift in customers. We are confident that the investment we have made in the technical platform over recent years has delivered superior performance against competing solutions. It's now essential that we capitalise on this and expose the platform to many more partners across all international markets and industry sectors.

To facilitate this, there has been an increase in business development activity during the period. A sophisticated outreach campaign has been developed, supported by our attendance at the major critical communication trade shows. We have recruited into the sales team to manage the increasing levels of new partner and customer engagement. As a result of this activity, new partners have been contracted in the UK, USA, Chile, Germany and UAE with expansion into further new territories anticipated.

Our existing partners have continued to make progress during the year. In South and Central America, we continued to focus on the deployment of the solution to public safety organisations and progress has been made here. We are now awaiting final confirmation around the hardware that will be utilised alongside our platform, and this should be the catalyst for a significant roll out. A number of other public safety organisations are now using our solution across the Caribbean, and we are in discussions with others across multiple territories. The quality of our solution and the relative cost compared to traditional radio platforms is attracting a lot of interest across the public safety sector, and we hope for a breakthrough before the end of the year.

In the UK we closed out a deal at Leeds Bradford airport ('LBA'), to provide their ground operations staff with our full PTToC solution. We understand that LBA is one of the first airports in Europe to upgrade its radio system to PTToC, and the publicity that was generated from this deal has resulted in a significant amount of interest from other airports.

A partnership agreement has also been reached with a UK security services business to deploy our solution into water utility businesses. This represents an interesting development, whereby our solution is adapted to meet the specific requirement of a particular industry sector. On a similar note, we are working with another UK partner to develop the solution specifically for the retail supermarket sector, to address opportunities both in the UK and Ireland. If these bespoke applications meet with success, we will look to roll them out to our global partner network and work with them to address their own local markets. 

In Africa, we recently extended our partnership with Instacom, a leading provider of critical communication solutions to government agencies and private companies. As part of the agreement, we will also act as exclusive UK reseller for Instacom's PTX personnel management platform. The platform enables the simple and effective management of employees, helping to improve operational efficiencies and productivity as well as reducing costs. We have been working with Instacom since 2010 and the continued growth of mobile network coverage across Africa is creating big opportunities for government agencies and private enterprises to increase safety, reduce costs, boost productivity and improve efficiency among their remote workforces. Completing this deal, and integrating the PTX platform into our own, will allow the Company to reduce R&D operating costs, as we can reduce the resources currently allocated to the development of our own workforce management platform.

In the Caribbean, our partner has built up strong sales momentum with Digicel, one of the main mobile network operators in the region. Deals have been closed within multiple sectors including public safety, security, hotels and logistics.

Funding

As announced on 22 September 2023, we agreed a 12-month extension of our revolving loan facility with our principal shareholder, InTechnology plc. This facility has a term ending on 26 September 2024 with a maximum principal amount of £500,000. The balance drawn down at 30 June 2023 was £150,000 and as at today's date, the balance drawn down is £190,000.

In March 2023, we concluded a subscription for 25.0m new ordinary shares of 2 pence each representing approximately 6.6 per cent. of the existing issued ordinary share capital of the Company at a price of 2 pence per share to raise £500,000. The Company also announced the capitalisation of £259,490 of indebtedness owed by the Company to InTechnology plc into 12,974,492 new Ordinary Shares, also at 2 pence per share.

We remain confident that our available cash resources together with our long-established recurring revenue customer base and anticipated future contracts will provide us with adequate financial resources for the foreseeable future.

Outlook

The Company has for some time been a key player in the PTToC market, with a presence in Africa, South America and Europe. Our solution meets the mission-critical communication needs of our customers, and is characterised by a number of key differentiators, such as seamless transition, market-leading group sizes, a unique dispatcher console, and highly efficient data utilization. These features continue to set us apart from our competitors and allow us to deliver market leading performance to our partners and customers.

The process of building a much deeper and wider business development operation commenced during the first half of the year and has made great progress. As a result, we have begun to open up new markets in the USA, parts of Asia and the Middle East. Physical attendance at trade shows and a more sophisticated PR strategy is generating significant inbound interest across many international markets. As previously mentioned, we have strengthened our sales teams to handle this increased activity and are now in the process of building much deeper and better quality sales pipelines.

Despite a challenging economic environment, the Board are confident that our solution offers quality and good value, particularly when compared to the traditional radio platforms. We are building a much wider partner network and are confident that the developing sales pipeline will convert into new customers in due course. At the same time, we are working with our partners to develop bespoke solutions for key verticals which will provide further opportunity as we look to push those solutions into the wider partner network.

Jeremy Fenn

Chairman

28 September 2023