itim Group plc (LON:ITIM), a SaaS based technology company that enables store-based retailers to optimise their businesses to improve financial performance, has provided the following unaudited trading update for the financial year ended 31 December 2021.
Group highlights
| · | Successful IPO in June 2021 raising £8m (before expenses) | |
| · | Year to 31 December 2021 revenue in line with expectations at circa £13.4m (unaudited), illustrating 14% year on year growth (FY 2020: £11.8m) | |
| · | Annual recurring revenue (“ARR”) at the year-end stood at a record circa £11.1m (unaudited), (FY2020: £9.6m) providing a strong revenue base going into 2022 (16% year on year growth) | |
| · | EBITDA (excluding IPO costs) for the year will exceed market expectations at £2.1m (unaudited), demonstrating year on year growth in excess of 40% (FY 2020: £1.5m) | |
| · | The Group ended the year with net cash balances of £6.2m (unaudited) (FY2020: £0.2m) with no outstanding loans. | |
Itim has widened its product offering to its existing client base during the period creating deeper relationships; and continues to provide a range of its services to more than 50 major retailers including John Lewis, Sainsbury’s, JD Sports, WH Smith and Majestic Wine amongst many others. Working with many well-known brands provides valuable insights into the retail industry enabling the Group to enhance its offering.
itim’s expectations that omni-channel retailing excellence allows retailers to drive organic growth are beginning to be reflected in the performance of those major high street retailers that have embraced the technology. The Group is seeing the results in the trading within their customer base, many of whom are committed to opening more stores due to its success. As such, we believe that ITIM’s technology solutions provide a lasting value added service to its client base.
In line with our strategy set out at the time of the IPO, itim is continuing to invest in new product development to further develop our technology proposition. We previously announced our Chameleon 360 range of store systems, which power our customers to omni-channel excellence. Furthermore, we expect to launch the itim-hub later this year, a supplier collaboration portal that enables our customers to launch their own marketplaces, as well as the ‘itim smart route’, enabling the facilitation of last mile delivery. Additionally, we are investing in technologies to improve stock distribution to support a much more complex omni-channel world; supporting despatch from store in addition to despatch from warehouse. Finally, we are reviewing the potential to partner with open-banking Fintec businesses to reduce the costs of supplier payments, as our software already automatically approves supplier invoices for 30 major retailers in the UK. Each of these investments will provide additional enhancements for both our existing and new customers, thereby providing further differentiation for itim’s solution.
Last month we created a new ‘retail advisory committee’ to help guide the development and direction of itim moving forward. The initial members of the new retail advisory committee are top industry leaders in retail, including the Company’s directors Justin King and Lee Williams, as well as a number of other high-profile advisors including Beth Butterwick, CEO of Jigsaw, Simon Forster, former CEO at Selfridges and Chris Brook-Carter, CEO at the Retain Trust. The quality of this advisory committee is testament to the strength of itim’s offering and its underlying strategy.
Ali Athar, Chief Executive Officer, commented: “I am delighted with itim’s performance throughout 2021 and the future growth opportunities we see in front of us. This underpins our confidence in our new customer pipeline to enable us to deliver a near doubling of our ARR by 2024 through organic growth. Trends in the retail market are driving more and more store based retailers to invest in omni-channel technology, enabling them to fight back against online only players and itim is ideally positioned to benefit from these trends through its proprietary technology solutions.”
