The half-year profit hike at mobile banking platform specialist Monitise isn't quite as impressive as it seems. That's because it reflects a one-off £10.1m gain relating to the acquisition of a 51 per cent holding in the Monitise Americas joint venture. Still, with an order book of £83m and visibility on £120m of revenues over the next five years, management raised full-year revenue guidance to £34m.
Monitise didn't sign a slew of new deals in the period – indeed, licence sales halved to £595,000. However, existing deals are now going live and the Visa alliance has been a boost. So development and integration revenues soared to £10.2m, from £1.6m last year, and higher-margin user-generated revenues doubled to £4.97m. This allowed the gross margin to improve by a point to 63 per cent and continued growth in user-generated revenues should propel that to 70 per cent by the second half. Furthermore, Monitise has continued its international assault, launching a 50:50 joint venture with Visa in India and entering into partnership with Jetco, the largest Hong Kong ATM operator.
Canaccord Genuity expects full-year pre-tax losses of £14.9m, giving a loss per share of 0.9p – profitability is forecast for 2014.
MONITISE (MONI) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ORD PRICE: | 36p | MARKET VALUE: | £291m | |
| TOUCH: | 36-37p | 12-MONTH HIGH: | 41p | LOW: 19.75p |
| DIVIDEND YIELD: | NIL | PE RATIO: | NA | |
| NET ASSET VALUE: | 9p* | NET CASH: | £12.6m** | |
| Half-year 31 Dec | Turnover (£m) | Pre-tax profit (£m) | Earnings per share (p) | Dividend per share (p) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | 5.31 | -8.70 | -1.30 | Nil |
| 2011 | 15.8 | 1.05 | 0.10 | Nil |
| % change | +198 | - | - | - |
*Includes intangible assets of £30.5m, or 4p a share **Excludes £30.5m of short-term investments | ||||
