itim Group plc (LON:ITIM) Chief Executive Officer Alio Athar and Chief Financial Officer Ian Hayes caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss financial highlights, business model, investments in R&D, strategies to maintain and strengthen relationships, and what investors can expect in the coming year.
Q1: Ian, if we can just start with you, could you take us through the financial highlights?
A1: There’s four main highlights this year for us.
We’ve increased our revenues by 15% and, more importantly, increased our EBITDA by 200%. We’ve got strong ARR at the end of the year at $13.2 million. There has been a shift in investor sentiment, so we’ve part growing ARR in the short term, and now we’re driving profits and cash generation. The last significant financial highlight is the investment period is now over.
Q2: How has itim Group’s business model demonstrated resilience and adaptability in the face of unprecedented challenges this past year?
A2: Very, very simply, we’ve got £13.2 million worth of recurring income. We’re not quite covering our cost base yet, but nearly there, and the balance will be covered by services income.
Q3: Ali, how have your investments in R&D contributed to keep the group ahead of an evolving market trend?
A3: Well, since we’ve floated, we invested a lot more in our technology platform, and recently we announced the release of our UNIFY platform.
What we’re trying to do is make sure that we provide excellence in omni-channel retailing and centred around what we’re calling retailers customer in a unified business model, and that’s really keeping us ahead of our competitors.
Q4: Could you elaborate on the strategies employed to maintain and strengthen your relationships with existing clients, as well as the approach taken to secure new business in the retail industry?
A4: The good news is the group about 80 core customers, both in the UK and internationally, and as we strengthen the depth and breadth of our platform, there are enormous opportunities to cross-sell elements of the platform to those customers.
So, we have a strong focus on account management and trying to make sure that we help our customers grow sales and profitability with the technologies we provide.
The approach to securing new business is really using case studies of what we managed to help our customers achieve and that allows us to demonstrate the way we add value to the retail industry.
Q5: Just coming back to you, Ian, what can investors expect from itim Group in the rest of the year?
A5: The key message, driving profitability and cash generation, and I think also more news flow as well. I think that’s a key message we’ve got from our investors, we need to talk to the markets more.
