GetBusy plc (LON: GETB) has today provided an update on trading for the year ended 31 December 2018.
Following on from the Group’s strong trading in the first half of 2018, trading in the second half has continued at a similar pace. The Group expects to report that total revenue increased approximately 20% to £10.9m, on a constant currency basis. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be in-line with expectations while cash as at 31 December 2018 was substantially better than expected at £2.5m, compared to £2.4m at 30 June 2018.
Growth in the Group’s high quality recurring subscription revenue, at constant currency for the full year, was 22% with the growth rate in the UK accelerating to 17% following strong order intake and the transition to a pure subscription model. Annualised Monthly Recurring Revenue at 31 December 2018 was £10.3m, an increase of 19% at constant currency.
In early December, we launched the new website and public beta for our GetBusy client chat and productivity app. This exciting development marks the start of our search for product-market fit for GetBusy and allows us to significantly increase the volume of beta users from whom we are obtaining feedback to iterate the product. Early indicators of cost-per-lead and conversion rates have been encouraging.
We are well progressed in the migration of our cloud-based SmartVault product from self-managed servers to Amazon Web Services, improving speed, reliability and security for our customers while ensuring the product is highly scalable. A one-off, non-underlying provision of £0.1m will be taken in 2018 for onerous contractual costs related to the previous self-managed server infrastructure.
The Group expects to announce its Final Results for the year ended 31 December 2018 on 5 March 2019.
Daniel Rabie, CEO of GetBusy plc, commented:
“Our dedicated and motivated team has made tremendous progress in 2018, our first full year as an independent public company, during which we’ve delivered a solid set of results, with cash and revenue ahead of expectations.
“Recurring revenue from Virtual Cabinet and SmartVault has continued to grow at strong rates due to the combined impact of favourable LTV:CAC ratios, low net MRR churn and a well-executed GDPR campaign. We’re well progressed with the migration of SmartVault to AWS, which will contribute to the product being as scalable as its transactional business model. And we’ve moved into an exciting phase for our new product, GetBusy, with the launch of the new website and public beta.
“As we look ahead to 2019, we will continue to invest in the growth of high quality recurring subscription revenues from SmartVault and Virtual Cabinet. As the volume of beta users for GetBusy increases we will continue to learn from the data we gather and iterate the product and marketing strategy accordingly. 2019 looks set to be an exciting year.”
* Recurring revenue growth quoted at constant currency.
