Shares in Bango (BGO) rose 8 per cent on release of half-year figures which showed the mobile payments specialist beating analysts’ expectations with a 100 per cent increase in end-user spend to £92m, coupled with significant revenue growth. Despite this step up in activity, operating costs remained stable at £2.72m, although the cash position was lower than a year earlier (£7.2m) but broadly in line with the December year-end.
Bango’s business model means that it earns revenues from each transaction processed on its platform. Direct carrier billing entails consumers making online purchases via Bango, and then being charged for these through their phone bills. Highlights for the period included a new partnership with Amazon to enable direct carrier billing for customers buying physical goods in Japan. This partnership could be highly significant: management says the launch reaches over 75 per cent of Japanese users of Android and iPhones – a potentially huge end market. Mobile operators are also swapping their incumbent payment platforms for Bango, with two Middle Eastern operators doing so in the first half. And it's leveraging its commercial data through the launch of the ‘Bango Boost v2’ service, which gives merchants intelligence on consumer spending patterns.
Broker Cenkos forecasts pre-tax losses of £0.6m and a loss per share of 3.2p in the year to December 2017 – better than the losses of £4.7m and 6.8p seen in 2016. The broker expects a pre-tax profit in 2018.
| BANGO (BGO) | ||||
| ORD PRICE: | 239p | MARKET VALUE: | £158m | |
| TOUCH: | 235-243p | 12-MONTH HIGH: | 274p | LOW: 67p |
| DIVIDEND YIELD: | na | PE RATIO: | na | |
| NET ASSET VALUE: | 17.2p* | NET CASH: | £5.6m | |
| Half-year to | Turnover | Pre-tax | Loss per | Dividend |
| 30 Jun | (£m) | loss (£m) | share (p) | per share (p) |
| 2016 | 0.9 | -2.8 | -4.1 | nil |
| 2017 | 1.7 | -2.0 | -2.7 | nil |
| % change | +101 | - | - | nil |
| Ex-div: | na | |||
| Payment: | na | |||
| *Includes intangible assets of £6.2m, or 10p a share | ||||
