Universe Group plc (LON:UNG) Chief Executive Officer Jeremy Lewis caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss the highlights of their full year results, how the business is growing, their EPOS & Gempay 3 products, installations for Rontec and strategy for the next 12 months.
Q1: I notice this morning that you’ve released full year results, can you talk us through the highlights?
A1: You will notice that we put out a trading update last November and we’ve slightly beaten those results in the results we announced this morning. We’ve had total revenues in line with where we were in previous years and a steady gross profit margin.
Q2: So, how do you see the business growing in the short and longer term?
A2: Well, we spent a lot of time in 2017 investing very heavily in development and bringing to market a number of new products particularly the EPOS product which is the electronic point of sale and also our payment device which is Gempay 3, both of which were successfully launched during the year.
Q3: Can you talk us through the production and the rollout of your next gen EPOS solution and the latest payment terminal Gempay 3?
A3: In EPOS, we had a big launch in the autumn with Rontec which is one of the major UK petrol forecourt operators and by the time we’d got to the year-end we’d got 70 sites up and running and we’ve had a few more since year-end as well.
We’ll be concentrating on taking that EPOS product out into the wider market during 2018 and in fact, we’re up in Birmingham at the NCS, which is a big annual trade show, is early next week and we’ll be hopefully announcing some further customers on that new EPOS product.
In terms of Gempay3, we launched that in October of last year and to date, we’ve had 1,500 successful installations and that one will continue to be rolled out as we go through the backend of this year as well.
Q4: As you mentioned, Universe Group has successfully completed 70 installations for leading petrol forecourt operator Rontec, can you tell us a bit more about this?
A4: Rontec have about 240 gas stations and has historically been a customer of ours for many years. We announced the fact that whilst we had always been the payment provider for them, they have been a big Gempay customer for many years, we had not put our EPOS product into there, if you remember, our business has three legs to it; EPOS, payment and loyalty.
So, we had the opportunity in the early part of last year to pitch for the EPOS business of Rontec and we were successful in winning that. Those installations started last year and will continue through this year as well.
Q5: Finally, what does Universe Group’s strategy look like for the next 12 months?
A5: If you look back at 2017, it was one of investing heavily in development, we also grew our product management teams and our sales team and we did that deliberately because we need those people in order to help us push the new products, particularly the EPOS product and Gempay 3.
The other thing in 2017, we had those successful product launches, we did make a number of management changes as well, so we had 3 board changes at PLC level and we did a number of other changes sub-PLC level.
So, what you’ll see in 2018, simply put, is building on what we achieved in 2017 so continual push of those products to drive the revenues and I think lastly, you’ll also see looking to be a bit more acquisitive as we seek to broaden our products and geographical footprint.
