Vianet Group PLC AGM Statement (4497R)
30 June 2020 - 4:00PM
UK Regulatory
TIDMVNET
RNS Number : 4497R
Vianet Group PLC
30 June 2020
30 June 2020
Vianet Group plc
("Vianet", "Company" or "the Group")
AGM Statement
Vianet Group plc (AIM: VNET), the international provider of
actionable data and business insight through devices connected to
its Internet of Things platform ("IOT"), will be holding its Annual
General Meeting ("AGM") today at 11.00 a.m. at the offices of
Vianet Group plc, One Surtees Way, Surtees Business Park, Stockton
on Tees, TS18 3HR.
As announced in the Company's Final Results on 2 June 2020, in
alignment to the UK Government's Covid-19 ("C19") measures, the AGM
is being held as a 'closed meeting' with a quorum of two and other
shareholders will not be able to attend in person. Votes will be
taken as a poll which will include all the proxy votes submitted in
accordance with the notice of AGM.
James Dickson, Chairman, will provide the following trading
update at today's meeting:
"Thanks to our proactive response to management of C19, the
Group's performance in the first two months of the financial year
has been very encouraging, with losses comfortably lower than
anticipated.
"On 23 June 2020, the Government announced that pubs could
re-open from Saturday, 4 July 2020 and that social distancing would
be eased from 2 meters to 1 meter plus. In our Smart Zones
division, whilst some pubs may not re-open immediately and others
will take some time to return to more normal levels of trade, the
majority of pubs which we service will start to re-open from 4 July
2020 and already our customers are increasingly seeking trading
data to improve decision-making during the C19 exit phase. Our
recent proposal to provide further temporary pricing relief to our
pub company customers has been very well received and will result
in billing of around 70% of normal contracted fees for weekly
support services until 31 October 2020, after which normal contract
terms will resume.
"Whilst it is too early to fully determine demand, we have also
received the first orders for Smart Shield, our recently launched
C19 sanitisation service for pubs.
"All of this is clearly good news for Vianet and our Smart Zones
customers, providing clarity and demonstrating a mutual commitment
to the C19 recovery phase. In addition to our UK hospitality
customers, we are also pleased to say that in North America, our
partner AMC Theatres, is planning to re-open in July.
"In Smart Machines, the decision to increase and accelerate our
Q4 2020 investment in additional sales and marketing capabilities
and our investment in the product roadmap is already starting to
yield results. We have seen strong momentum that we forecast will
accelerate our growth during the C19 exit phase. Contracts have
been finalised with several new customers, including Tchibo and
Lavazza, and there is an encouraging pipeline of new contracts
under discussion that are pending customers returning to more
normal operations in the coming months. The strong pipeline is
being driven by the growing trend away from cash payments, towards
connected assets with reduced frequency of site visits and
minimised business risk. These strong trends will continue to gain
momentum post lockdown, increasing the requirement for remote
connection to unattended retail assets and demand for our PCI
Master Merchant status, which allows us to speed up the on-boarding
of customers for payment capability.
"Whilst we recognise that the C19 situation is still
unpredictable and uncertain, we remain confident that the Group is
in a very good position to resume its strong earnings growth,
continue the solid momentum that was building into FY2021 and
deliver on the exciting growth opportunities that we see ahead of
us."
- Ends -
Enquiries:
Vianet Group plc
James Dickson, Chairman Tel: +44 (0) 1642 358
Stewart Darling, CEO / Mark Foster, 800
CFO www.vianetplc.com
Cenkos Securities plc
Stephen Keys / Cameron MacRitchie Tel: +44 (0) 20 7397
8900
www.cenkos.com
Media enquiries:
Yellow Jersey PR
Sarah Hollins Tel: +44 (0)7764 947
Henry Wilkinson 137
vianet@yellowjerseypr.com Tel: +44 (0)7951 402
336
www.yellowjerseypr.com
About Vianet
Vianet Group is a leading provider of actionable management
information and business insight created through combining data
from our smart Internet of Things ('IOT') solutions and external
information sources.
Since Admission to AIM in 2006, the Group has grown from its
core beer monitoring business both organically and through
strategic acquisitions to widen its offering and also develop new
businesses, especially in vending telemetry and contactless payment
solutions particularly for the premium coffee sector.
Servicing over 300 customers across the world and rendering live
data to our IOT platform from over 250,000 connected machines
daily, Vianet is one of the largest business to business (b2b)
connected solutions providers in Europe with established long term
relationships with blue chip customers and growing recurring
revenues which are over 85% of our total revenues.
In our Smart Machines Division we connect a single data
gathering device with its own on-board communication capability to
a customer's asset or system. The device then sends data back via
our IOT platform to cloud based servers. The technology was
originally developed for automated retailing machines, however the
flexibility and functionality of the device means the technology
can be applied to practically any machine which has the capability
to output data. The device is also used to connect our contactless
payment solution and communicate payment terms to our cloud based
payment services providers where that application is also
required.
The Smart Zones Division is where we connect multiple data
gathering devices into one or more systems or assets with the data
from those devices being communicated back to our IOT platform and
cloud based servers via a single 3G communications hub. The
technology was originally developed for flow monitoring devices,
temperature sensors, and asset management in drinks retailing but
practically any data gathering device with a digital output could
be connected to the communications hub where required such as
gaming machines, utilities management and EPOS.
For further information, please visit www.vianetplc.com
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END
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