FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Velti Plc
Year-End Trading Update
Velti plc ('Velti' or 'the Company'), the leading mobile marketing and advertising technology
provider for advertising agencies, mobile operators and media, announces that it has
achieved a strong financial performance for 2009. Overall, Velti is experiencing increasing
demand for its products and services from existing and new customers, which are
increasingly allocating budgets to the mobile channel on a global basis.
As a result of strengthening customer demand and expansion into new global markets, the
Company expects its performance for the year ending 31 December 2009 to have been
broadly in line with market expectations with total revenues (including other income) in
excess of €65 million, an increase of approximately 24 per cent on 2008.
Key drivers for 2009
The strong growth achieved in 2009 reflects a combination of:
o solid, profitable growth with improving margins due to the popularity of Velti’s
performance-based solutions and success of our Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
model;
o further contract wins with key brands such as Colgate-Palmolive, British American
Tobacco, Mastercard, Renault, Toyota, Honda, Reebok, Bayer, Computer Science
Corporation, Panasonic, Paris, Sony Ericsson, SKY, Coca-Cola, Beck’s, Chivas,
Dewars, Nutella, Bel, Kinder Bueno, Peace Cup, Olympic Air, Unilever’s Dove and
Kaliakra, Misco-Barilla, Atkins Diet;
o renewal of key operator contracts with Vodafone, Orascom-WIND, Orange, Telecom
Austria, MTS, Movistar-Telefonica, Avea (Turkey), T-Mobile (Cosmote), and winning
new contracts with other operators such as AT&T Wireless (US), Cellular South (US),
Cable & Wireless (Panama), Batelco (Bahrain), Zain (Jordan), Du (Emirates), Far
Eastone (Taiwan), China Unicom (China), Cellcom (Liberia);
o continued investment in Velti’s global footprint, which resulted in significant
successes in China, India, US and Europe through our local ventures and partners in
each geography; and
o integration of Ad Infuse’s ad routing and ad serving technology, giving us the
industry’s only SaaS-based, end-to-end mobile marketing and advertising solution
for brands, agencies and mobile operators.
Expansion of the Business
During 2009, we ran more than 2,000 campaigns globally for 450 brands, agencies and
mobile operators.
In 2009 we expanded our relationships with global mobile operator groups. For Orange, we
established ad serving contracts in France, UK, Spain, Poland, Romania and Moldova. For
Orascom/WIND Group, we established mobile marketing contracts in Italy, Egypt, Algeria,
Greece, and the rest of their operations in Africa and the Middle East. These, together with
significant wins for the mobile marketing and loyalty campaigns for operators, provide
ongoing revenue without the need to pitch competitively for each new campaign, which will
continue to form an important part of our operator strategy in 2010.
We also continued to expand our relationships with brands and agencies. Net revenue from
previous customers grew significantly year-on-year and comprised approximately two thirds
of our 2009 net revenues. Our relationship with UK multi-channel retailer Argos (flagship of
the Home Retail Group) illustrates this strategy. After initially engaging Velti in 2008 to
increase sell-through rates and improve customer satisfaction, the group, which has c. 700
stores and annual revenue of c. £4.3 billion, has steadily added Velti mobile marketing
capabilities resulting in 82 per cent year-on-year growth in revenues from the client.
In April 2009, we completed the acquisition of Ad Infuse, a leading US mobile ad network
with customers including Orange, Swisscom, Sky, CBS and Shazam, 31 employees based in
San Francisco, New York and London and a highly experienced management team. Ad
Infuse’s best-of-breed mobile ad serving and routing technology platforms enable
advertisers, publishers, brands and operators to place ads on multiple networks and manage
them in real time. We have incorporated the technology acquired from Ad Infuse’s mobile
advertising platform into Velti’s platform to create the first end-to-end solution for media
planning, campaign management, optimization, execution, analytics and hosting of mobile
marketing and advertising campaigns. This new integrated platform, already live at beta
customers since October, is called Velti mGage™ and was launched globally earlier this
week.
In Greater China, we continued our expansion through our investment in Casee, as well as
our direct Velti sales force selling to regional mobile operators like China Mobile, China
Unicom and Far EasTone in Taiwan. Casee, as the largest mobile advertising exchange in
China, continues to demonstrate solid growth.
Our joint venture with India’s HTMedia began to bear fruit during 2009. The joint venture
launched its first campaigns in June, completed integration of mobile direct response into
the Hindustan Times newspaper and established commercial relationships with 17 operators.
We continued our expansion in Eastern Europe, securing contracts with Globul, Mtel and
Vivatel in Bulgaria, Avea (one of the three large operators in Turkey with 12.5 million
subscribers), and MTS amongst others.
Our expansion continued into Latin America, where we won contracts with Movistar in
Mexico and Cable & Wireless in Panama.
We also launched numerous campaigns in the Middle East and Africa. We ran mobile
marketing campaigns for mobile operators including Zain, Mobinil (Egypt), Jawwal
(Palestine), Du (UAES), Mobilink (Pakistan) and Batelco, the principal mobile provider in
Bahrain.
Furthermore, we saw continued progress by Ansible, Velti’s joint venture with Interpublic Group, with client wins including Microsoft, Timberland, Sony, HP, Hyundai, and the American Heart Association.
To help guide the next stage of Velti’s global growth, we hired a new CFO in 2009. Wilson W.
Cheung joined Velti from AXT, Inc., a NASDAQ-listed semiconductor firm, where he had been
CFO since 2004. Prior to AXT, he held senior financial positions at NASDAQ-listed Yahoo! Inc.
and Interwave Communications. A Certified Public Accountant, Mr. Cheung has worked as an
auditor with Deloitte & Touche and KPMG and has brought to Velti significant compliance and
operational skills.
Finally, in October, the Company announced its redomiciliation in Jersey, through the
creation of a new Jersey-incorporated, AIM-listed company named Velti plc as the holding
company of Velti and its subsidiaries. Velti plc is now tax resident in the Republic of Ireland.
David Mann, Non-Executive Chairman commented: “Velti has continued to perform very
well, delivering increased revenue and profit in the face of economic difficulties across all our
markets. As we move beyond the global recession of 2008-2009, Velti is well positioned to
take advantage of renewed business activity and increased focus on mobile marketing and
advertising by brands, agencies and mobile operators around the world. We look forward to
another year of very satisfactory growth in 2010.”
Alexandros Moukas, Chief Executive Officer added: “Velti enters 2010 as the global leader in
mobile marketing and advertising, well positioned to benefit from the shift from non
measured, impression-based media (TV, print) to measureable media (online, mobile). In
addition to organic growth across all vertical segments and regions, Velti is gaining traction
from our strategic acquisitions and joint ventures. The beginning of consolidation in the
space through Google’s acquisition of AdMob and Apple’s acquisition of Quattro Wireless
underline the fact that the mobile marketing and advertising market is expected to grow
considerably in 2010 and Velti is very well positioned to benefit from that growth.”
END
For further information, please contact:
Velti
Alex Moukas,
Chief Executive Officer
+44 (0) 207 633 5000
Wilson Cheung,
Chief Financial Officer
+44 (0) 207 633 5000
Bankside Consultants
Simon Bloomfield
simon.bloomfield@bankside.com
+44 (0) 207 367 8861
Steve Liebmann
steve.liebmann@bankside.com
+44 (0) 207 367 8883
Andy Harris
andrew.harris@bankside.com
+44 (0) 207 367 8866
RBC Capital Markets
Joshua Critchley
joshua.critchley@rbccm.com
+44 (0) 207 002 2435
Matthew Coakes
Matthew.coakes@rbccm.com
+44 (0) 207 7653 4871
Brett Jacobs
Brett.jacobs@rbccm.com
+44 (0) 207 002 2091