TIDMTUNG
RNS Number : 1962S
Tungsten Corporation PLC
22 September 2014
TUNGSTEN CORPORATION PLC
("Tungsten")
NOT FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION IN WHOLE OR IN
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NOR ANY JURISDICTION WHERE TO DO SO WOULD CONSTITUTE A VIOLATION OF
THE RELEVANT LAWS OF SUCH JURISDICTION
For Immediate Release 22 September 2014
ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING STATEMENT
London, 22 September - Tungsten Corporation plc will hold its
Annual General Meeting today at 14:00 BST in London. Edmund Truell,
Group CEO, Tungsten Corporation plc will make the following
statement:
"Welcome to our first Annual General Meeting as a public
company.
Since our admission to AIM we have learnt a great deal more
about the market opportunity for Tungsten Corporation. We have been
able to establish a reasonable route map to set out our vision: to
achieve $1trn in annual invoice flow through our network, to
finance $100bn of invoices annually and generate $10bn in annual
cost savings for our clients through Tungsten Network Analytics. We
are delighted with our progress towards these goals in the 11
months since we came to market.
We were pleased to have received such strong support upon our
admission to AIM by attracting GBP160m of gross new money and a
market capitalisation of GBP225m, which today sits close to
GBP400m. We recently raised another GBP12m in an oversubscribed
placing at 340p, with part of the proceeds being used to finance
the acquisition of DocuSphere, a complementary business that that
will enable us to generate revenues from large contract wins
faster.
The market for e-Invoicing continues to see increasing levels of
adoption. An estimated 170bn non-consumer invoices will be
exchanged around the world this year with more than 8% sent
electronically. In Europe, 24% of these invoices are expected to be
electronic. Tungsten plays a role in educating organisations on the
benefits of e-Invoicing and supporting their activities as they
eliminate paper from their processes. Our e-Invoicing business,
Tungsten Network, is benefitting from the growing penetration of
electronic invoicing. In July 2014, Tungsten Network processed the
highest monthly volume of transactions in its history and now has
over 171,000 registered suppliers.
This has helped to underpin a strong start to the financial year
for Tungsten Network and as a result the Group is ahead of budget
for the first four months of FY15. As we have from inception, we
expect this year to be a year of heavy investment and transition in
the rollout of our products and services. We are pleased that
significant new multinational buyers have selected Tungsten to
support their plans for Accounts Payable automation, such as GE,
Fresenius, British American
Tobacco and most recently global healthcare leader Sanofi. At
the same time existing customers are renewing their contracts, such
as BT, Kerry Group, Amgen US and Mohawk, and expanding their scope
of work to include new services and geographies. We believe that we
can reach our $1trn goal by addressing the full scope of our
current buyers.
While our customers and future customers in our pipeline will
deliver continued growth for Tungsten Network, this growth will be
determined by the speed of e-Invoicing implementation. Our recent
acquisition of DocuSphere, a provider of AP automation solutions,
enhances our control of implementation by reducing our reliance on
third parties. It also introduces new revenue opportunities and
helps customers achieve straight-through processing.
The strength of our footprint within individual sectors
continues to increase. For example, with five new buyers in the
healthcare sector, seven of the top-twelve global pharmaceutical
businesses now receive invoices electronically through Tungsten
Network.
Meanwhile, governments around the world, including Germany,
Italy and Spain, are improving their own operational efficiencies
with e-Invoicing. Other countries, like Mexico, Brazil and Turkey,
are mandating e-Invoicing for transactions between businesses to
gain visibility of their tax obligations before invoices are
delivered to customers. We continue to engage with governments,
such as the UK, Germany and US, to share our experience and support
their e-Invoicing initiatives.
Our focus for the coming year is on improving the customer
experience. We continue to invest heavily in people, infrastructure
and working capital, and build on the GBP9m spent in FY2014 on
customer acquisition, systems development and the global expansion
of the group. We are now compliant in 46 countries having recently
added the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. We continue to work on
adding new geographies that are important to our multinational
buyers, including India, China, Qatar, Chile and Japan.
In our drive to disrupt the market for receivables financing,
the Tungsten Finance team marked a significant milestone when it
completed the PRA and FCA approval process in June to create
Tungsten Bank as a fully authorised UK bank.
We remain very confident that the market for alternative sources
of finance is a highly attractive sector, as traditional lending
still fails to support the cash and growth needs of
small-to-medium-sized businesses. In 2013, the global market for
receivables financing in the form of factoring increased by 4.6% to
over EUR2.2trn. The use of asset-based finance in the UK has
increased by 29% since the nadir of the recession. In the same
period, net traditional lending fell by 19%.
Our trials to test the systems and registration processes of the
Tungsten Finance business have provided us with valuable insights
that allow us to refine our offering. Our simple online
registration process is already proving popular with suppliers, who
value the contrast to the cumbersome set up required by traditional
factoring firms. The ease of use and ability to select invoices for
early payment are among our key differentiators. We are also
encouraged that some much larger suppliers are signing up for the
service, which confirms that it is attractive for the full range of
vendors in a supply chain.
There are many processes required to be ready to offer finance
in multiple jurisdictions. For example, we believe that best
practice demands that we conduct rigorous 'know your customer' and
anti-money laundering checks on all of the 171,000 suppliers that
are offered early payment. Back in February our buyers told us of
the cumbersome processes to change bank account details, so we
refined our processes to be 'once only'. We are determined to
deliver a scalable and sustainable model, working to the highest
regulatory standards, as we believe that in the long term this will
deliver the best outcomes.
We are making good progress in developing additional sources of
financing capital to ensure that we have access to billions in
financial facilities to offer our suppliers. These include our
negotiations with Blackstone Tactical Opportunities, corporate
depositors, and potential long-term debt providers including the
British Business Bank. We expect to update the market in due
course.
Procurement is the target market for our spend analysis solution
through Tungsten Network Analytics. A global survey by professional
services firm Deloitte estimates that 68% of Chief Procurement
Officers are investing in supplier insight through analytics. We
are receiving high interest in the potential impact our innovative
solution offers with line-level detail and real-time results.
We continue to develop the technology, and have recently added
daily and weekly reports that alert users to price variations as
they happen; before invoices are processed or paid. As we run
real-time customer data through the system, we have identified
possible savings of between 1% and 4% of spend processed via
Tungsten Network.
Our wide-scale programme of customer engagement has already
progressed to discussions with the first 18 of our multinational
businesses and government buyers. We look forward to being able to
sign up Tungsten Network Analytics contracts in due course.
To support our growth plans across the Tungsten group, we have
launched a large-scale recruitment and retention programme and are
hiring 100 people this year. We are welcoming many new faces to the
Tungsten team globally, in particular in customer relations, sales,
technology development and marketing.
As always, I am grateful to the Tungsten Corporation board
members for their ongoing guidance and support, joined recently by
the Bank board. We would not be able to make the rapid progress
required by our business without the full cooperation and
collaboration of our Tungsten colleagues. As we work to monetise
the global supply chain, we are building rapidly on our already
excellent team to be sure we have the very best resources in place
to deliver greater value to all stakeholders.
Thank you."
About Tungsten Corporation plc
Tungsten Corporation (LSE: TUNG) accelerates global trade by
enabling customers to streamline invoice processing, improve
cash-flow management and make better buying decisions from their
detailed spend data.
Buyer organisations that join Tungsten Network, built on OB10
e-Invoicing, can reduce their invoice-processing costs by over 60%.
Suppliers benefit from efficiencies, greater visibility of their
invoice status and peace of mind. Tungsten offers supply chain
financing through Tungsten Bank to suppliers and helps buying
organisations profit by applying real-time spend analytics to its
vast repository of line-level invoice data.
Tungsten Network serves 53% of the Fortune 500 and 66% of the
FTSE 100 by connecting the world's largest companies and government
agencies to their thousands of suppliers around the globe. It is
compliant in 46 countries, and processes transactions worth over
$187bn per year for organisations such as Alliance Data, Aviva,
Cargill, Deutsche Lufthansa, General Motors, GlaxoSmithKline,
Henkel, IBM, Kellogg's, and US Federal Government.
Tungsten Corporation joined forces with OB10 in 2013 to create
the world's largest electronic trading network.
Enquiries:
Tungsten Corporation plc
Edmund Truell, Chief Executive Officer +44 20 3435 5680
Sandra Higgison, Head of Global Communications +44 20 7280
7973
Charles Stanley Securities
(Nominated Adviser and Joint Broker)
Marc Milmo/Dugald Carlean +44 20 7149 6000
Canaccord Genuity Limited
(Joint Broker)
Simon Bridges/Peter Stewart/Cameron Duncan +44 20 7523 8000
Equus Group (Communications)
Piers Hooper / Sam Barton +44 20 7223 1100
This information is provided by RNS
The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
END
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