The launch of the Location Sciences division marks Proxama’s strategic shift from proximity marketing to the more scalable location data products. This first-party data is very high quality and can be used for customer targeting and advertising attribution. Management is focused on rapidly growing audience reach and data revenues to bring the group to break-even. While early in its transition, progress is encouraging; the National Rail partnership announced in July increases its audience to over c 4m.
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Proxama |
Leveraging its unique mobile location data
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Media & technology |
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18 September 2017 |
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The launch of the Location Sciences division marks Proxama’s strategic shift from proximity marketing to the more scalable location data products. This first-party data is very high quality and can be used for customer targeting and advertising attribution. Management is focused on rapidly growing audience reach and data revenues to bring the group to break-even. While early in its transition, progress is encouraging; the National Rail partnership announced in July increases its audience to over c 4m.
Not all location data is created equal
Using geo-location and beacon technology, the recently renamed Location Sciences division delivers precise location data to a market that otherwise may be reliant on considerably less accurate information derived from third-party data such as bid requests for ad exchanges. Data can be used multiple times across a wide range of industries; for instance, to improve customer targeting or demonstrate the effectiveness of a marketing campaign. Importantly, the attribution services can link online and offline behaviour and can track the impact of an ad campaign all the way to the shop floor.
Early in transition; audience reach encouraging
Growing audience reach is key to ensuring that its data offers sufficient scale as well as quality. While early in its transition, the group has made a good start on this front. Key partners include Mapway and The Rail Delivery Group, which extended Proxama’s cumulative audience to over 4m and data points to over 2bn, and led management to increase its year-end targets to 5m and 5bn, respectively. With this reach, Location Sciences is positioned competitively among UK peers such as Foursquare. Four customer contracts have been announced this year and while revenues are nascent (H117 data revenues £50k of £1.0m total), they are high margin and the H2 customer pipeline is developing well.
Funding and future milestones
The annualised cost base has been reduced c 40% to £4m and the payments division, while non-strategic, now generates a relatively stable £0.3m annualised cash flow. Together with the £3.1m fund-raising in July, management expects this to support the group to break-even. Location data is increasingly fundamental to how companies interact with users. It powers 38% of mobile ad impressions, a market worth approximately £4bn in the UK and successful companies are hotly contended; Snap’s $135m acquisition of Placed is a notable example. While early stage, Proxama’s market capitalisation is unassuming. In the absence of forecasts in the market, tracking new partner announcements, customer wins and data growth is key to assessing progress.
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Historical financials
Source: Proxama report and accounts |
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Research: Financials
FinLab’s results combine relatively stable income from management fees and dividends received from the asset management subsidiaries, Heliad and Patriarch (total income at €1.76m vs €1.88m in H116), and sizeable revaluation gains (Kapilendo, Heliad) of €2.52m (vs -€0.3m in H116). The recent share issue and improved operating cash flow increased the company’s net cash position to €4.28m from €0.97m at end-2016. This puts FinLab in a strong position to execute further fintech investments. Following the recent positive share price performance, FinLab’s shares trade at an 18.9% premium to last reported NAV.