Tuesday, July 08, 2014 4:41:25 PM
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Monitise's CEO Presents at Trading Update Call (Transcript)
Jul. 8, 2014 4:26 PM ET | About: Monitise PLC (
Executives
Alastair Lukies – Chief Executive Officer, Monitise Plc
Elizabeth Buse – Chief Executive Officer, Monitise Group
Brad Petzer – Chief Financial Officer
Andrew Griffin – Senior Vice President, Investor Relations-Haya Herbert-Burns
Analysts
Mohammed E. Moawalla – Goldman Sachs International
David T. Mulholland – UBS Ltd.
Monitise Plc (OTCPK:MONIF) Trading Update Conference Call July 8, 2014 8:00 AM ET
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon and welcome to the Monitise call. There will be opportunities for questions following some introductory remarks. (Operator Instructions)
Before we begin, we would like to remind you that certain statements made on this conference call contains forward-looking statements. While these forward-looking statements are made in good faith, they are based upon the information available to Monitise on the date of this call and upon current expectations, projections, market conditions and assumptions of our future events.
These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties and assumptions about the Group and should be treated with an appropriate degree of caution. I must remind you that this call is being recorded today.
I will now hand over the call to our first speaker, Alastair Lukies, Founder and Co-CEO of Monitise. Please go ahead, sir.
Alastair Lukies
Thank you, very much. And a very good morning from here New York and a good afternoon, if you’re dialing in from Europe, seems to be many of you dialing in, so thanks very much for your interest and taken the time out.
I’m joined here in New York by Co-CEO, Elizabeth Buse; and Deputy CEO and Chief Commercial Officer, Lee Cameron. And we have our CFO, Brad Petzer and our Senior Vice President of Investor Relations, Andrew Griffin participating from London.
We wanted to get out and issue a trading update as quickly as we possibly could. Usually, we would do one a few weeks later in July, we felt it was as soon as practical the right thing to do to update the market, although which has been another year of great progress, and really I think most importantly for me, explained to ever and why we say with company better place than ever before on our journey to what we’ve been calling Monitise 2.0, a fully productized, open-API interface, faster on-boarding for banks, operators, retailers and a platform that we think is the common obvious choice to customers.
Not just today, but actually view it’s a common many of you would have seen some of the statistics coming off from some of the banks that we provide services for today, who are literally recreating their entire businesses around mobile.
We had, we believe if you think back 12 months, an incredible year in terms of the operating metrics, money moved and paid on our platform is now running as an annualized rate of $88 billion per annum, 120% year-on-year. Over 30 million users now registered Bank, Pay or Buy platform customers up 2 million in February.
And then there is another 30 million through some strategic acquisitions we made, both Monitise Create and Monitise MEA, who are using some elements of Monitise software, and we fully intend to work with the partners that brands record those consumers, so integrate in our Bank, Pay, Buy capability, whether that leads to mobile check-outs, peer-to-peer payments et cetera. So, it’s not just a circuit to register and grow in on the call platform, we now got access to a much broader base of consumers, but we think we can monetize going forward.
As you know, our main focus now as a company we’re very, very focused on this, is to accelerate average user growth. The 30 million that customers that I just described from the new brands there are absolutely one stores. We’ve also signaled our intent to make it easier to onboard new banks, mobile operators, retailers to our platforms. But accelerated there is about standardized Monitise Central Platform.
We’re now offering a peer subscription model, we’ve reduced all the barriers to entry, our pipeline of a company has never been stronger, and the incoming interest in our platform are, I can rightly say, has never been any way near the stronger that is today.
This move towards subscription model is a pretty well short impulse, I think most people on this call will know that businesses will, sort of the old infrastructure worshipping business model are struggling. We’ve always moved our platforms and our model at exactly the right time, and we think that’s going to come through in the KPIs and the free points over the next few years.
So, we have guided obviously our trading update going forward with confidence of our aspirations, this year and to 2018. And we think the transition is going as well as if not better than we expected when we announced it in March this year.
So, I’m going to hand over to Brad, who will briefly give you an indication of the high level financial numbers. I would like to reiterate this is only a few days after the end of the year, so usually what we are doing is a bit later on, there will be high level for now and then I’ll pass on to Brad. Thanks very much for your attention. Brad?
Brad Petzer
Good evening from London. Monitise will record revenues of between £95 million to £97 million for the fiscal year between 2014, an increase of 31% to 33% over the previous year. This is less than our previous guidance of 40% growth and because of the small number of license deals that we expected to sign, ended up having such sub-optimal terms or subsequent off to recognition maybe monthly sign, a licensed based contracts. That will generate future revenue, but involve more outlay subscription component and therefore delayed revenue recognition.
We believe this is in the interest of our future revenue and profitability potential and the images of shareholders. The license revenue from the deals would have led us to beat our 40% revenue growth guidance for fiscal 2014.
As a result we expect our EBITDA loss per fiscal 2014 to be between £32 million to £36 million. This is during the consensus of £28 million. The difference is again driven by the license revenue shortfall versus our expectations. Because we have a very solid gross cash balance of £145 million, we have no debt, but our finance-lease liability our net cash recorded, it will be at £144 million.
In 2015, we expect the revenue growth of at least 25%. Our longer-term guidance remains unchanged, including our intention to be profitable in fiscal 2016.
I will now hand over to Elizabeth. Elizabeth?
Elizabeth Buse
Thank you, Brad. Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. I want to reinforce that I believe we at Monitise have made the right decision in our financial year of 2014 to begin to implement the model that we have committed to. It’s the right thing for our shareholders. It’s the right thing for our clients, and it’s the right thing for our employees. And I’m confident in our ability to deliver the platform, to deliver the product, and in turn to generate the number of users we are targeting and the revenue that we are targeting from each of those users.
And I’m also confident and have spend some time with some in our partners and clients willingness to provide that revenue, and importantly, for you all in our ability to structure our cost base consistent with that new model, to create a large and highly profitable technology and product base company on the timeline that the company has committed to next year and each of the subsequent year leading up to 2018.
And now, I’ll hand it over to Griff, who will be moderating the question-and-answer session.
Andrew Griffin
Thanks Elizabeth. Hello, everyone. We now have 20 minutes to take questions. I’d remind you that our update today is unaudited numbers. So, we are not able to go into anymore financial detail until our preliminary results are released.
Stephanie, please do go ahead and call for questions.
Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions)
Alastair Lukies
Hi, Griff, it’s Al here.
Andrew Griffin
Yes, we are ready to go Stephanie.
Operator
Yes, we are ready to go.
Andrew Griffin
Could we take the first question from (indiscernible).
Operator
Thank you. Sir, your line is open.
Unidentified Analyst
Hi, thanks. Just a couple of questions, if I may. Just first of all, the Company clearly goes now in a kind of period where from our perspective, it is more difficult to follow because the historical KPIs are probably less relevant for your kind of co-main to semester or so. So, I was wondering what are you able to kind of provide to kind of for example, the deal metrics over the coming 12 months to guide us a bit more towards 2018 targets.
Then secondly, there has been some commentary from some brokers in the market around Visa, FIS and I think HSBC as well, which are opening quite a bit of volatility in the stock price in the run-up to this warning and perhaps because there’s good momentum to kind of address that. And then finally, there’s a question for Elizabeth. How confident do you feel about the kind of 2018 targets? Clearly they were set in motion before you arrived. So quite like to have your opinion about those targets and how do you think Monitise will get there. Thank you.
Alastair Lukies
Thanks. Thanks (indiscernible) for those three very important questions. So it’s Al here. I’ll probably start and then I’ll hand over to Elizabeth. First to probably mind, I don’t – Gerald as you’ve been good enough to know us and follow us for quite a while. I don’t think a huge amount has changed in terms of our focus on sort of deals. Within the structure they do this changing as we believe that Mobile Money is going to play out and the infrastructure sends it battle of middle earth that you and I often talked about in the next sort of 48 months. We really believe that the next three to four years are absolutely critical, but if you think of it in a pure play sense i.e., a company that’s got 1,500 plus employees as global reach have accessed most blue chips in a partnership you can ever wish for in the space. We are by far the front-runner in that.
That said, what we do continue down the path of the old business model where we do lots of professional services and systems integration work, focusing on big license deals to grow top line, I think we would be ultimately damaging, sell the value in the long-term because this market payment is always about interoperability and 10% of a big number is a lot better than 100% of nothing. And I think it’s very important that people remember the time it takes to establish platform integrations into the core banking systems and to the payment networks yet should not be discarded. You have the displacement value once you got your platform connected into the ecosystem. It’s incredibly valuable. That’s why the Visas and MasterCards and ATM – where we had them.
So, yes, we truly (indiscernible) as a vertical line on your page and as a horizontal line on your page. The vertical line is all about more content, more functions, more products, more capability. Three years ago you’re only able to check balance and maybe move some money between your accounts. You can now send money to your friends and family anywhere in the world. You can buy products and services. There’s a ton more stuff that you can do and obviously with our recent acquisition there is a lot of very valuable content that our consumers can consume while they secure out.
And then along the horizontal line, on the bottom of the page, it’s more banks, it’s more infrastructure deals, it’s more partnerships that give us more rates to the 2.2 billion bank paper on the planet and ultimately everyone has to come bank all time. And the way that we’re going to do, which we’ve been very clear about for the last two years, is that everyone distinct their core competency. So big systems integrators like IBM, like Cognizant, like CGI already work with banks around the world.
So integrate systems to build, change management processes we have a unique set of capability in the space that we think add value to their business and to the joint customers that we both go after together. So the things that we’re going to be doing will be with the same sort of customers, same sort of partners that are all focused on mass market into an update at new revenue streams. So nothing is going to change that.
In answer to your second question I’ve been fully aware of some of the things that have been out and speculated on. And I have to say on one of them particularly. I find it astonishing as the CEO of a public company and I’ve spoken to one of the analysts in this case, who I believe has been sharing this information, it’s amazing to me that wanting the vigilant employee of an organization that’s moved from a previous organization, it could potentially be a disgruntled employee in a very new role in that business can have a point of view on the decisions that have been taken who would level within those companies.
So I just find it amazing that they did with any quittance at all. What I said to everyone who told me about the views on what I just – think about all capabilities and platform or indeed what these think about, okay, so this is the platform, speak to a decision-maker and it’s very important to you that you get under the skin of where they had to make in space in their relationship with Monitise. Don’t speak to somebody that’s working for someone who works for someone, who works for someone, who works for someone, lost in a big organization. So that’s not up being defensive. We’ve never claimed have every bank in the world.
We’ve never claimed to say that HSBC have committed their entire future of mobile to our business, but I can certainly reassure you as the Chief Executive of Visa Europe this in a quote in a press release not more than a few months ago that our relationship with Visa Europe has never been stronger. The partnership is going from strength to strength and about the warrants that Visa Europe we’d say have to crystallize the full sometime this year, and that’s what happens. And regarding FIS and then I’ll hand over to Elizabeth. Again Gary Norcross, the President the COO of FIS, if anyone has any concerns about the strength of our relationship with FIS, which probably is going incredibly well at the moment, they should speak to Gary.
So I’ll hand over to Elizabeth now who can answer your question on her level of confidence.
Elizabeth Buse
Thanks, Al. So in a word I am confident in the numbers that were established by the company before I joined in March. And I am even more confident now that I’m in the company than I was before. And fortunately because those numbers were established before I came I had time to do some research from the outside and of course you look at two things. One, is at the macro level is there enough growth and opportunity in the market for those numbers to be creditable and you all agree the same studies that we do. Certainly the digital channel is in a unique position and this is a unique time of growth for it.
And then second, can this particular company with its assets generate users, generate the revenue and does it have enough money to do it. And I believe strongly that we do and that we do uniquely because of the things that Al outlined. Interoperability and that is across financial institution, across networks, across mobile network operators. Probability, both of those are rare. And the third, taking a financial institution centric model, which means we have to be bank raid and consumer cross it. That with what the company has outlined as the technology journey after implementation open APIs and the product journey. Bank pay or buy or any combination of those three give me great confidence that we will make our top line and bottom line numbers in each year and so apply 18 and enough.
Unidentified Analyst
That’s very clear. Thank you.
Andrew Griffin
Thanks very much. Our next question comes from Moawalla at Goldman Sachs.
Elizabeth Buse
Your line is open.
Mohammed E. Moawalla – Goldman Sachs International
Great. Thank you very much. Al and maybe Elizabeth, maybe if you can talk us through some of the dynamics on the user base evolution. I know you sort of said that there will clearly be potentially some further changes going forward, but if I look the sequential growth in the user base, it’s only about 2 million in the second half of fiscal 2014. So a typical run rate in prior halves has been faster. So I’m just curious to understand what would grow the deceleration.
And is there something going on from a customer standpoint in terms of that as they consume the products, are they’re sort of pausing and expanding the scope of deployments? Hence, it’s kind of little more backend loaded acceleration or is I think that are kind of out of your control. I just want to understand these dynamics here, because obviously – if I bridge that 30 million today to the 200 million in 2018 you’re talking about, there’s clearly a big uplift required. So if you can walk us through the customer level, what’s happening that would be great?
Alastair Lukies
Yes. Hi, Moa, it’s Al and great question. You just don’t see a point of clarity that the rise in 28 million to 30 million was actually compared already. So, it was in four months of the half and so about 500,000 a month growth. And as you know very well and many people that are on this call, yes, we’ve always been crystal clear and in fact the fundamental reason why our company exits. Consumers facing companies in the Ax space, who have tried to go out and build mass market businesses really, really struggled, right. If you think of PayPal as the rare example of a business that had done incredibly well in payments of financial services in the ground up that’s been a long journey and it was formed – it was almost mandated by very big brand in eBay. eBay said you must use PayPal. That’s how PayPal got their distribution.
We have believed from day one and we’ve stuck to it for the last 1,000 or so years that Wall Street maybe a painstaking process. It takes the long time to get banks to agree to use third parties to build technology, integrate technology, test technology, get it through security, PCI compliance; all the things that Elizabeth just talked about, and let’s remember our platform has been doing that for many years. It’s now doing billions and billions and billions of transactions a year on behalf of some of the world’s biggest banks.
The cycles that consumer uptake aren’t driven by Monitise. So we believe passionately 10% of a big number being a lot better than 100% of nothing. If I look at the accumulative call base of the banks that we work with today, the payments bonus that we work today, it runs into the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds million of cards. We then are obviously beheld to their right marketing campaign. So many of you know Yaap, the joint venture between Telefónica, Santander and Caixa Bank in Spain has just gone live. We would expect that to have an impact on our user numbers.
HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank in India have just gone local. Movida, same thing. We have a large number of banks that we’re striking to either directly or through partners at the moment and so you adjust then with the cycles of the banks’ promotion. As we now open up the APIs and we give all participants in the ecosystem the chance to join the Monitise platform and promote the service where the only time they would ever be paying us if consumers are using the service, we expect that that curve is going to start to accelerate quite substantially throughout the end of 2015 into 2016, so obviously in more detail now we can take you through how we think those KPIs are hits.
But if you just took all call base, addressable market base today and then took an assessment on the successful shifts, so mobile from cards following the same sort of proper Internet banking, then actually you’ll see that the 200 million is more than within our grasp to achieve. So there’s not been a slowdown.
The other 30 million users that we were focusing today, all of those brands, whether that’s FIFA with the football World Cup app, whether that’s brands like Premier Inn or some of the retailers that we build apps for we’re now in well progressed conversations with those companies who say, would you now like to integrate into the core MCP because then you can start to monetize your customers, which of course is in their interest as well. So I don’t have any concerns about consumer uptake. In fact, with the projects that we have underway at the moment, I think we are more confident than ever before about our 200 million KPI.
Mohammed E. Moawalla – Goldman Sachs International
Okay. And just in terms of going forward, what sort of metrics do you think that will be –is it just going to be the users or will there be additional metrics that you can surely help us get some conviction around the shape of this acceleration?
Alastair Lukies
Yes, absolutely. Moa, I think if I just go back to my answer to Gerald, that sort of graph the horizontal line and the vertical line, I think the horizontal line we will continue to help, map out to you all what does a relationship with a particular partner means. So, obviously if it’s a bank and it’s a core integration the addressable market is that bank’s debit and credit card base.
So I think a bank with 10 million users, two cards per person then 20 million cards if we can go for one app per person and that’s essential addressable market, the 10 million if half their customers end up using mobile by 2018, there is five million users, straight forward as that. It’s B2B to B2C i.e. is FIS to sign up X number of banks, we’ll have to share down the pie, will get us to market; same with Visa, same with MasterCard. And then obviously with some of our bigger distribution partners like the IBM, the [Visa] (ph) and the Cognizants and the CGIs, we have in the process at the moment, one of the reasons I’m out here working through. We’ll then go to market strategies where they have their own internal number, their own internal aspirations and that helps us model where they think they can get to us as well.
Then on the vertical line, I think which is where your question headed, we can start to be much more open over the course of the next sort of six months, 12 months about what people are actually doing within the services, within these apps. As we integrate the content, look at all recent acquisitions, look at some partnerships we’re going to announce imminently what we’ll start to show to you is that in the same way a consumer who is doing a balancing quarry in 2011 is now paying their bills, sending money to family and friends, using the 'Get Cash' service for emergency cash, topping up registered mobile phones.
That same consumer will be over the course of the next 18 months to 24 months making purchases, receiving discounts on their favorite retailers et cetera, et cetera. So, we can be much more open about how that’s happen, and obviously yes just going live. We are starting to already get some good insights into what consumers want from an m-commerce platform.
Mohammed E. Moawalla – Goldman Sachs International
Great. Just finally in terms of the launch of additional services in the remainder for this year and early next year. Can you just give us a quick sense of what’s coming?
Alastair Lukies
I’m sorry, Moawalla, I miss the beginning of that question.
Mohammed E. Moawalla – Goldman Sachs International
And then in terms of your app just launched in Spain, but I know you’ve got some additional services launching in other countries at the back-end of this year, early next year. Can you give us a kind of a rough outline of what we can expect in terms of that kind of services that would be launching anywhere?
Alastair Lukies
Yes, of course. Again, sorry to say like broken neck will come back to my L shape. You’re aware Moa, as many people on this call are, where we have an existing bank relationship. We are working full speed to now, if those banks have been our great partners and our great supporters for years. The first kind of right of refusing, it would like all the great content that we are now plugging so, the Markco Media acquisition some of the partnerships that we are pulling in from Monitise Create.
So, where you know that we provide mobile banking for bank today expect both banks to be making the journey to m-commerce pretty quickly over the course of the next 6 months to 12 months. And then in terms of new deals you’re absolutely right to pickup when you have that hopefully will be the first there are number of similar deployments around the world between each focus in an ecosystem is bread and butter same track.
So, we think that mobile operators, retailers and banks are now going to see there is a model where they defend themselves from the threats. And I think within the quarter, we are talking again in a year time look at our existing banks introducing m-commerce to them our banking customers and look at new partnerships, where the glue between three industries that need to work together. And I would think that we will be able to look at many more those being live in the ground by a 12 month stock.
Mohammed E. Moawalla – Goldman Sachs International
Okay, that’s great. Thank you.
Andrew Griffin
(Operator Instructions) Our next question is from David Mulholland by UBS.
David T. Mulholland – UBS Ltd.
Hi, thanks for taking the time. I’m just – I’ll stick to one question Andrew. I just wonder– if you give us a bit more color around the contracts that you say that has not been signed part of because of the transition. I’m just wondering, if this just one or two contracts that have caused the difference. And could you possibly give us some clarity around what the customer reaction was given essentially this gives you a better revenue potential in the long-term from the contracts, and with like getting the license from the short term is that something you’re happy with they understand, and that was it their decision or was it your decision to July signing?
Alastair Lukies
Great. Hi, David, Great question. Just a quick remind us sort of instead scenario that were okay, Monitise over the years, we are a slightly bigger company now. But if you think back to 2009, when we first signed our major deal with Visa Inc. for LiveWire Visa Europe and obviously the other partners as well. We were negotiating deals with companies many, many times of our size. These deals can take quite a long time to negotiate that the deals that we refer to and they not of log in, it’s just the two deals that we refer to in this announcement and what does the sort of the most imminent one they were in a pipeline, but they started being negotiated some time ago.
We absolutely when we announced the shifting the business model went back them for complete transparency. We knew, but the time when we announced it all our existing customers and those that were in the pipeline, but want to say, okay what is it mean to us. How this is going to exchange our engagement with you.
So, we went back to the partners we had some very, very positive conversions with not just these two, many, many other partners. They are going a way that sat down like we haven’t and look to they’re negotiating spreadsheets. And they come back and they said yes, we understand the model. We understand the 10% of a big numbers a lot better than 100% of nothing for all of us. And so I would say by mutual agreement, we’ve taken to our board obviously we have a very strong boards for a company of our size, we sat down with the board and we said look. We think that this deal on the table, we could probably accelerate and close this deal today. But we think that there is probably a better deal for us in our shelves, does it we hold on now, I guess is the right phrase to use.
And sort of – I want to be incredibly complimentary about these two potential partners. Because we believe they are going to become formal partners very soon, but you’re already on the caller, of being around the block ahead. These are very, very big companies who look at when our year end is, they look at when we have to report and they themselves their business is that is driven by quarterly sales cycles. And I believe they felt like they were in a much stronger negotiating position than us.
I believe what we’ve done is the sale of strength from our company, we’ve gone out publicly and we said, we’re not going to be squeezed into sub-optimal deals anymore just because with this small guys in this ecosystem. We have massive, massive value to add that the glue between with all of these big partners, and I think you’re going to see – we much more confident about the deals that we saw in going forward.
David T. Mulholland – UBS Ltd.
Just one clarification, which I can – can you just confirm whether these would have been new customers or whether they might have been renewals.
Alastair Lukies
Both would have been near in the contract of then contracting to by our technology, one of them is a partner we already work within other area.
David T. Mulholland – UBS Ltd.
That’s good. Thanks very much.
Alastair Lukies
Great question that was.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from (indiscernible).
Unidentified Analyst
And just a quick one on your new platform, so Monitise Central Platform supposed to be ready by Q1 2015 according to what I understand. Just to clarify how is that different, how is that in addition to the platforms that you’re working on in December 2012 when you raised £100 million, if I remember correctly. And what gives you confident that this is actually the last (indiscernible) and from then on you’ll be able to onboard customers innovative away and you will not need to spend massively on CapEx anymore.
Alastair Lukies
Yeah. Hi Alex, great question. And I’m sorry that I don’t have instantly to hand the stats. We lost that. I think I put pretty good view, when we did a capital raise back in 2011, that you place…
Unidentified Analyst
2012.
Alastair Lukies
Well, I think if you look back at the reporting period we would have been talking of probably stock £1 billion transactions a year. So we were a company that builds up through joint venture, if you remember we had a joint venture in the UK with link. We had a joint venture in America with Metavante FIS. We had joint ventures in Asia and we had built-up versions of all platform that was sort of localized to reach territory and each of those platforms combined was doing under £1 billion transactions a year.
And I remember people learn I don’t think with Matthew and I both at that stage, but people let then say in you’re never going to scare, if you know you’re talking about big boy games here with big banks, you will never scale. So, what we hadn’t said was we were going to fill the centralized platform, we can met the Monitise end product platform, which was going to evolve from just balance inquiries and using trials to be much more repayments transaction platform.
And obviously in the statistics that we have announced today with there in wide an excessive $4 billion transactions, yes, it’s huge amounts of scales going into the platform and of course, we’re talking about £88 billion worth of payments and transfers, so we said we done exactly what we said do, we build a centralized platform that builds confidence with banks and payments parts and consumers to do more with the app that they have in the front screen of their phone.
So that was that something we said we do with our capital we made very good use of that capital remain debt free and method unquestionably the world’s lead pure play mobile banking and pilot platforms storm, it’s four of the top five independent analyst in the world in our space fully best in class year-on year.
So, I think that’s included the return on investment. But events this year we placed our bets, we are not provide of that – we’re very, very confident about them. We said now is the time for commerce. Now is the time the tens of millions, I mean hundreds of millions of consumers have a banking app for (indiscernible) that are going to stop we more than just pay, they are going to start to buy stuff.
And so what we said with the capital raise early this year is we’re going to complete the task, we’re going to finish off the pyramids, we’re going to open up the API to a new sets of users and new set of partners in retailers and affiliate networks and loyalty equipment companies and that’s all are going to become part of this global center called the MCP.
The good news Alex and driven also on the call is an all started from scratch. And that’s being proven beyond the (indiscernible) because yet, is one of the first examples of that deployment, it’s plugged into banks, it’s plugged into mobile operators and plugged into over 200 retailers. But that’s a standalone iteration of that platform.
What we’re referring to Alex for Q1 2015 is the launch of a globally accessible open-API model where actually whether it’s content from the UK or content from Spain or content from Germany or content from North America. It’s all accessible to all our partners and if you imagine that for a big brand like, let’s say a Nike or Visa even who is already a customer of ours, what an amazing ecosystem for them to be able to plug into and say, yes, I want to distribute my content to people globally. I then have Elizabeth looking to…
Elizabeth Buse
I would just add very simply that we are not rebuilding the Monitise Enterprise Platform. We are not rebuilding the Monitise Vantage platform, which is what has been implemented in North America. We are adding capabilities that can be used by those financial institutions that have adopted our mobile banking platform and can be used by other partners who have their own or other versions of mobile banking services additive to our existing partners and it dramatically expand our reach to create kind of a bit of a Chinese menu in that. If you have banking software you can still use, okay, and buy products and/or continue to add content to provide even more functionality to those clients who today are using each one of those services from us.
Alastair Lukies
And just a final one from me, very much better for pilots, but to me, Alex you yourself remember when we first spoke, we’re a strong believer that the mobile operators had a really big role to play in this space and that we were probably facing a very big bet on banks. I’m still as confident as ever, perhaps more confident that, yes, regulating because we have one of the bank be your front screen app, because we are starting to see some companies ranging from bitcoins to other things, companies store and took your money without expecting to be regulated and I think that’s just not going to happen.
So, I think but you yourself said it publically in a report you wrote about us, Monitise isn’t exposed to mobile operators, what if they win. Other people senses Monitise isn’t exposed to retailers, what if they win. Great news is we’re exposed to all three of them now and we’re helping them come together. So being the sticky glue in the middle, I think is a very valuable place for us to be.
Unidentified Analyst
Okay. Thank you very much.
Andrew Griffin
We have no further questions. So we’ll close the Q&A there and Al, I’ll hand you back for the closing comments.
Alastair Lukies
Lovely bank script. Well, look, it’s so great because I’ve seen the number of the people on the call. So if nothing else, yes, Monitise is in the public more than ever before. Our ridge which is lot of ridges right from my perspective, as many of you know, I’ve been doing this for some time. I’ve never been more assured about our role in the ecosystem. It was funny. Someone called me last week when they heard some of these rumors that we addressed earlier about certain banks having a point of view, certain middle managers in a bank having a point of view about Monitise’s role in the ecosystem. We’ve never ever, in fact we’ve gone out of our way to say every bank is going to have its own view about the roles, every mobile operator and retailer as we’ve seen through joint ventures called AGIT’s or we or MCX, people are going to try lots and lots of different things.
Monitise is adding picks and shovels to the gold rush. Monitise believes that 10% of a big number is a lot better than 100% of nothing. And I do not see a company anywhere near us in this space. So we’re debt free. We have almost £150 million starting on our balance sheet. We have an amazing team of people and a brilliant set of partnerships. They’re all dedicated to us for the long-term. So I think we’re in better shape than ever before and I really appreciate the fact that many of you dialed into this call today.
Andrew Griffin
Thanks everyone and good morning. Good afternoon.
Alastair Lukies
Thanks a lot (indiscernible).
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our call for today. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.
Monitise's CEO Presents at Trading Update Call (Transcript)
Jul. 8, 2014 4:26 PM ET | About: Monitise PLC (
Executives
Alastair Lukies – Chief Executive Officer, Monitise Plc
Elizabeth Buse – Chief Executive Officer, Monitise Group
Brad Petzer – Chief Financial Officer
Andrew Griffin – Senior Vice President, Investor Relations-Haya Herbert-Burns
Analysts
Mohammed E. Moawalla – Goldman Sachs International
David T. Mulholland – UBS Ltd.
Monitise Plc (OTCPK:MONIF) Trading Update Conference Call July 8, 2014 8:00 AM ET
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon and welcome to the Monitise call. There will be opportunities for questions following some introductory remarks. (Operator Instructions)
Before we begin, we would like to remind you that certain statements made on this conference call contains forward-looking statements. While these forward-looking statements are made in good faith, they are based upon the information available to Monitise on the date of this call and upon current expectations, projections, market conditions and assumptions of our future events.
These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties and assumptions about the Group and should be treated with an appropriate degree of caution. I must remind you that this call is being recorded today.
I will now hand over the call to our first speaker, Alastair Lukies, Founder and Co-CEO of Monitise. Please go ahead, sir.
Alastair Lukies
Thank you, very much. And a very good morning from here New York and a good afternoon, if you’re dialing in from Europe, seems to be many of you dialing in, so thanks very much for your interest and taken the time out.
I’m joined here in New York by Co-CEO, Elizabeth Buse; and Deputy CEO and Chief Commercial Officer, Lee Cameron. And we have our CFO, Brad Petzer and our Senior Vice President of Investor Relations, Andrew Griffin participating from London.
We wanted to get out and issue a trading update as quickly as we possibly could. Usually, we would do one a few weeks later in July, we felt it was as soon as practical the right thing to do to update the market, although which has been another year of great progress, and really I think most importantly for me, explained to ever and why we say with company better place than ever before on our journey to what we’ve been calling Monitise 2.0, a fully productized, open-API interface, faster on-boarding for banks, operators, retailers and a platform that we think is the common obvious choice to customers.
Not just today, but actually view it’s a common many of you would have seen some of the statistics coming off from some of the banks that we provide services for today, who are literally recreating their entire businesses around mobile.
We had, we believe if you think back 12 months, an incredible year in terms of the operating metrics, money moved and paid on our platform is now running as an annualized rate of $88 billion per annum, 120% year-on-year. Over 30 million users now registered Bank, Pay or Buy platform customers up 2 million in February.
And then there is another 30 million through some strategic acquisitions we made, both Monitise Create and Monitise MEA, who are using some elements of Monitise software, and we fully intend to work with the partners that brands record those consumers, so integrate in our Bank, Pay, Buy capability, whether that leads to mobile check-outs, peer-to-peer payments et cetera. So, it’s not just a circuit to register and grow in on the call platform, we now got access to a much broader base of consumers, but we think we can monetize going forward.
As you know, our main focus now as a company we’re very, very focused on this, is to accelerate average user growth. The 30 million that customers that I just described from the new brands there are absolutely one stores. We’ve also signaled our intent to make it easier to onboard new banks, mobile operators, retailers to our platforms. But accelerated there is about standardized Monitise Central Platform.
We’re now offering a peer subscription model, we’ve reduced all the barriers to entry, our pipeline of a company has never been stronger, and the incoming interest in our platform are, I can rightly say, has never been any way near the stronger that is today.
This move towards subscription model is a pretty well short impulse, I think most people on this call will know that businesses will, sort of the old infrastructure worshipping business model are struggling. We’ve always moved our platforms and our model at exactly the right time, and we think that’s going to come through in the KPIs and the free points over the next few years.
So, we have guided obviously our trading update going forward with confidence of our aspirations, this year and to 2018. And we think the transition is going as well as if not better than we expected when we announced it in March this year.
So, I’m going to hand over to Brad, who will briefly give you an indication of the high level financial numbers. I would like to reiterate this is only a few days after the end of the year, so usually what we are doing is a bit later on, there will be high level for now and then I’ll pass on to Brad. Thanks very much for your attention. Brad?
Brad Petzer
Good evening from London. Monitise will record revenues of between £95 million to £97 million for the fiscal year between 2014, an increase of 31% to 33% over the previous year. This is less than our previous guidance of 40% growth and because of the small number of license deals that we expected to sign, ended up having such sub-optimal terms or subsequent off to recognition maybe monthly sign, a licensed based contracts. That will generate future revenue, but involve more outlay subscription component and therefore delayed revenue recognition.
We believe this is in the interest of our future revenue and profitability potential and the images of shareholders. The license revenue from the deals would have led us to beat our 40% revenue growth guidance for fiscal 2014.
As a result we expect our EBITDA loss per fiscal 2014 to be between £32 million to £36 million. This is during the consensus of £28 million. The difference is again driven by the license revenue shortfall versus our expectations. Because we have a very solid gross cash balance of £145 million, we have no debt, but our finance-lease liability our net cash recorded, it will be at £144 million.
In 2015, we expect the revenue growth of at least 25%. Our longer-term guidance remains unchanged, including our intention to be profitable in fiscal 2016.
I will now hand over to Elizabeth. Elizabeth?
Elizabeth Buse
Thank you, Brad. Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. I want to reinforce that I believe we at Monitise have made the right decision in our financial year of 2014 to begin to implement the model that we have committed to. It’s the right thing for our shareholders. It’s the right thing for our clients, and it’s the right thing for our employees. And I’m confident in our ability to deliver the platform, to deliver the product, and in turn to generate the number of users we are targeting and the revenue that we are targeting from each of those users.
And I’m also confident and have spend some time with some in our partners and clients willingness to provide that revenue, and importantly, for you all in our ability to structure our cost base consistent with that new model, to create a large and highly profitable technology and product base company on the timeline that the company has committed to next year and each of the subsequent year leading up to 2018.
And now, I’ll hand it over to Griff, who will be moderating the question-and-answer session.
Andrew Griffin
Thanks Elizabeth. Hello, everyone. We now have 20 minutes to take questions. I’d remind you that our update today is unaudited numbers. So, we are not able to go into anymore financial detail until our preliminary results are released.
Stephanie, please do go ahead and call for questions.
Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions)
Alastair Lukies
Hi, Griff, it’s Al here.
Andrew Griffin
Yes, we are ready to go Stephanie.
Operator
Yes, we are ready to go.
Andrew Griffin
Could we take the first question from (indiscernible).
Operator
Thank you. Sir, your line is open.
Unidentified Analyst
Hi, thanks. Just a couple of questions, if I may. Just first of all, the Company clearly goes now in a kind of period where from our perspective, it is more difficult to follow because the historical KPIs are probably less relevant for your kind of co-main to semester or so. So, I was wondering what are you able to kind of provide to kind of for example, the deal metrics over the coming 12 months to guide us a bit more towards 2018 targets.
Then secondly, there has been some commentary from some brokers in the market around Visa, FIS and I think HSBC as well, which are opening quite a bit of volatility in the stock price in the run-up to this warning and perhaps because there’s good momentum to kind of address that. And then finally, there’s a question for Elizabeth. How confident do you feel about the kind of 2018 targets? Clearly they were set in motion before you arrived. So quite like to have your opinion about those targets and how do you think Monitise will get there. Thank you.
Alastair Lukies
Thanks. Thanks (indiscernible) for those three very important questions. So it’s Al here. I’ll probably start and then I’ll hand over to Elizabeth. First to probably mind, I don’t – Gerald as you’ve been good enough to know us and follow us for quite a while. I don’t think a huge amount has changed in terms of our focus on sort of deals. Within the structure they do this changing as we believe that Mobile Money is going to play out and the infrastructure sends it battle of middle earth that you and I often talked about in the next sort of 48 months. We really believe that the next three to four years are absolutely critical, but if you think of it in a pure play sense i.e., a company that’s got 1,500 plus employees as global reach have accessed most blue chips in a partnership you can ever wish for in the space. We are by far the front-runner in that.
That said, what we do continue down the path of the old business model where we do lots of professional services and systems integration work, focusing on big license deals to grow top line, I think we would be ultimately damaging, sell the value in the long-term because this market payment is always about interoperability and 10% of a big number is a lot better than 100% of nothing. And I think it’s very important that people remember the time it takes to establish platform integrations into the core banking systems and to the payment networks yet should not be discarded. You have the displacement value once you got your platform connected into the ecosystem. It’s incredibly valuable. That’s why the Visas and MasterCards and ATM – where we had them.
So, yes, we truly (indiscernible) as a vertical line on your page and as a horizontal line on your page. The vertical line is all about more content, more functions, more products, more capability. Three years ago you’re only able to check balance and maybe move some money between your accounts. You can now send money to your friends and family anywhere in the world. You can buy products and services. There’s a ton more stuff that you can do and obviously with our recent acquisition there is a lot of very valuable content that our consumers can consume while they secure out.
And then along the horizontal line, on the bottom of the page, it’s more banks, it’s more infrastructure deals, it’s more partnerships that give us more rates to the 2.2 billion bank paper on the planet and ultimately everyone has to come bank all time. And the way that we’re going to do, which we’ve been very clear about for the last two years, is that everyone distinct their core competency. So big systems integrators like IBM, like Cognizant, like CGI already work with banks around the world.
So integrate systems to build, change management processes we have a unique set of capability in the space that we think add value to their business and to the joint customers that we both go after together. So the things that we’re going to be doing will be with the same sort of customers, same sort of partners that are all focused on mass market into an update at new revenue streams. So nothing is going to change that.
In answer to your second question I’ve been fully aware of some of the things that have been out and speculated on. And I have to say on one of them particularly. I find it astonishing as the CEO of a public company and I’ve spoken to one of the analysts in this case, who I believe has been sharing this information, it’s amazing to me that wanting the vigilant employee of an organization that’s moved from a previous organization, it could potentially be a disgruntled employee in a very new role in that business can have a point of view on the decisions that have been taken who would level within those companies.
So I just find it amazing that they did with any quittance at all. What I said to everyone who told me about the views on what I just – think about all capabilities and platform or indeed what these think about, okay, so this is the platform, speak to a decision-maker and it’s very important to you that you get under the skin of where they had to make in space in their relationship with Monitise. Don’t speak to somebody that’s working for someone who works for someone, who works for someone, who works for someone, lost in a big organization. So that’s not up being defensive. We’ve never claimed have every bank in the world.
We’ve never claimed to say that HSBC have committed their entire future of mobile to our business, but I can certainly reassure you as the Chief Executive of Visa Europe this in a quote in a press release not more than a few months ago that our relationship with Visa Europe has never been stronger. The partnership is going from strength to strength and about the warrants that Visa Europe we’d say have to crystallize the full sometime this year, and that’s what happens. And regarding FIS and then I’ll hand over to Elizabeth. Again Gary Norcross, the President the COO of FIS, if anyone has any concerns about the strength of our relationship with FIS, which probably is going incredibly well at the moment, they should speak to Gary.
So I’ll hand over to Elizabeth now who can answer your question on her level of confidence.
Elizabeth Buse
Thanks, Al. So in a word I am confident in the numbers that were established by the company before I joined in March. And I am even more confident now that I’m in the company than I was before. And fortunately because those numbers were established before I came I had time to do some research from the outside and of course you look at two things. One, is at the macro level is there enough growth and opportunity in the market for those numbers to be creditable and you all agree the same studies that we do. Certainly the digital channel is in a unique position and this is a unique time of growth for it.
And then second, can this particular company with its assets generate users, generate the revenue and does it have enough money to do it. And I believe strongly that we do and that we do uniquely because of the things that Al outlined. Interoperability and that is across financial institution, across networks, across mobile network operators. Probability, both of those are rare. And the third, taking a financial institution centric model, which means we have to be bank raid and consumer cross it. That with what the company has outlined as the technology journey after implementation open APIs and the product journey. Bank pay or buy or any combination of those three give me great confidence that we will make our top line and bottom line numbers in each year and so apply 18 and enough.
Unidentified Analyst
That’s very clear. Thank you.
Andrew Griffin
Thanks very much. Our next question comes from Moawalla at Goldman Sachs.
Elizabeth Buse
Your line is open.
Mohammed E. Moawalla – Goldman Sachs International
Great. Thank you very much. Al and maybe Elizabeth, maybe if you can talk us through some of the dynamics on the user base evolution. I know you sort of said that there will clearly be potentially some further changes going forward, but if I look the sequential growth in the user base, it’s only about 2 million in the second half of fiscal 2014. So a typical run rate in prior halves has been faster. So I’m just curious to understand what would grow the deceleration.
And is there something going on from a customer standpoint in terms of that as they consume the products, are they’re sort of pausing and expanding the scope of deployments? Hence, it’s kind of little more backend loaded acceleration or is I think that are kind of out of your control. I just want to understand these dynamics here, because obviously – if I bridge that 30 million today to the 200 million in 2018 you’re talking about, there’s clearly a big uplift required. So if you can walk us through the customer level, what’s happening that would be great?
Alastair Lukies
Yes. Hi, Moa, it’s Al and great question. You just don’t see a point of clarity that the rise in 28 million to 30 million was actually compared already. So, it was in four months of the half and so about 500,000 a month growth. And as you know very well and many people that are on this call, yes, we’ve always been crystal clear and in fact the fundamental reason why our company exits. Consumers facing companies in the Ax space, who have tried to go out and build mass market businesses really, really struggled, right. If you think of PayPal as the rare example of a business that had done incredibly well in payments of financial services in the ground up that’s been a long journey and it was formed – it was almost mandated by very big brand in eBay. eBay said you must use PayPal. That’s how PayPal got their distribution.
We have believed from day one and we’ve stuck to it for the last 1,000 or so years that Wall Street maybe a painstaking process. It takes the long time to get banks to agree to use third parties to build technology, integrate technology, test technology, get it through security, PCI compliance; all the things that Elizabeth just talked about, and let’s remember our platform has been doing that for many years. It’s now doing billions and billions and billions of transactions a year on behalf of some of the world’s biggest banks.
The cycles that consumer uptake aren’t driven by Monitise. So we believe passionately 10% of a big number being a lot better than 100% of nothing. If I look at the accumulative call base of the banks that we work with today, the payments bonus that we work today, it runs into the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds million of cards. We then are obviously beheld to their right marketing campaign. So many of you know Yaap, the joint venture between Telefónica, Santander and Caixa Bank in Spain has just gone live. We would expect that to have an impact on our user numbers.
HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank in India have just gone local. Movida, same thing. We have a large number of banks that we’re striking to either directly or through partners at the moment and so you adjust then with the cycles of the banks’ promotion. As we now open up the APIs and we give all participants in the ecosystem the chance to join the Monitise platform and promote the service where the only time they would ever be paying us if consumers are using the service, we expect that that curve is going to start to accelerate quite substantially throughout the end of 2015 into 2016, so obviously in more detail now we can take you through how we think those KPIs are hits.
But if you just took all call base, addressable market base today and then took an assessment on the successful shifts, so mobile from cards following the same sort of proper Internet banking, then actually you’ll see that the 200 million is more than within our grasp to achieve. So there’s not been a slowdown.
The other 30 million users that we were focusing today, all of those brands, whether that’s FIFA with the football World Cup app, whether that’s brands like Premier Inn or some of the retailers that we build apps for we’re now in well progressed conversations with those companies who say, would you now like to integrate into the core MCP because then you can start to monetize your customers, which of course is in their interest as well. So I don’t have any concerns about consumer uptake. In fact, with the projects that we have underway at the moment, I think we are more confident than ever before about our 200 million KPI.
Mohammed E. Moawalla – Goldman Sachs International
Okay. And just in terms of going forward, what sort of metrics do you think that will be –is it just going to be the users or will there be additional metrics that you can surely help us get some conviction around the shape of this acceleration?
Alastair Lukies
Yes, absolutely. Moa, I think if I just go back to my answer to Gerald, that sort of graph the horizontal line and the vertical line, I think the horizontal line we will continue to help, map out to you all what does a relationship with a particular partner means. So, obviously if it’s a bank and it’s a core integration the addressable market is that bank’s debit and credit card base.
So I think a bank with 10 million users, two cards per person then 20 million cards if we can go for one app per person and that’s essential addressable market, the 10 million if half their customers end up using mobile by 2018, there is five million users, straight forward as that. It’s B2B to B2C i.e. is FIS to sign up X number of banks, we’ll have to share down the pie, will get us to market; same with Visa, same with MasterCard. And then obviously with some of our bigger distribution partners like the IBM, the [Visa] (ph) and the Cognizants and the CGIs, we have in the process at the moment, one of the reasons I’m out here working through. We’ll then go to market strategies where they have their own internal number, their own internal aspirations and that helps us model where they think they can get to us as well.
Then on the vertical line, I think which is where your question headed, we can start to be much more open over the course of the next sort of six months, 12 months about what people are actually doing within the services, within these apps. As we integrate the content, look at all recent acquisitions, look at some partnerships we’re going to announce imminently what we’ll start to show to you is that in the same way a consumer who is doing a balancing quarry in 2011 is now paying their bills, sending money to family and friends, using the 'Get Cash' service for emergency cash, topping up registered mobile phones.
That same consumer will be over the course of the next 18 months to 24 months making purchases, receiving discounts on their favorite retailers et cetera, et cetera. So, we can be much more open about how that’s happen, and obviously yes just going live. We are starting to already get some good insights into what consumers want from an m-commerce platform.
Mohammed E. Moawalla – Goldman Sachs International
Great. Just finally in terms of the launch of additional services in the remainder for this year and early next year. Can you just give us a quick sense of what’s coming?
Alastair Lukies
I’m sorry, Moawalla, I miss the beginning of that question.
Mohammed E. Moawalla – Goldman Sachs International
And then in terms of your app just launched in Spain, but I know you’ve got some additional services launching in other countries at the back-end of this year, early next year. Can you give us a kind of a rough outline of what we can expect in terms of that kind of services that would be launching anywhere?
Alastair Lukies
Yes, of course. Again, sorry to say like broken neck will come back to my L shape. You’re aware Moa, as many people on this call are, where we have an existing bank relationship. We are working full speed to now, if those banks have been our great partners and our great supporters for years. The first kind of right of refusing, it would like all the great content that we are now plugging so, the Markco Media acquisition some of the partnerships that we are pulling in from Monitise Create.
So, where you know that we provide mobile banking for bank today expect both banks to be making the journey to m-commerce pretty quickly over the course of the next 6 months to 12 months. And then in terms of new deals you’re absolutely right to pickup when you have that hopefully will be the first there are number of similar deployments around the world between each focus in an ecosystem is bread and butter same track.
So, we think that mobile operators, retailers and banks are now going to see there is a model where they defend themselves from the threats. And I think within the quarter, we are talking again in a year time look at our existing banks introducing m-commerce to them our banking customers and look at new partnerships, where the glue between three industries that need to work together. And I would think that we will be able to look at many more those being live in the ground by a 12 month stock.
Mohammed E. Moawalla – Goldman Sachs International
Okay, that’s great. Thank you.
Andrew Griffin
(Operator Instructions) Our next question is from David Mulholland by UBS.
David T. Mulholland – UBS Ltd.
Hi, thanks for taking the time. I’m just – I’ll stick to one question Andrew. I just wonder– if you give us a bit more color around the contracts that you say that has not been signed part of because of the transition. I’m just wondering, if this just one or two contracts that have caused the difference. And could you possibly give us some clarity around what the customer reaction was given essentially this gives you a better revenue potential in the long-term from the contracts, and with like getting the license from the short term is that something you’re happy with they understand, and that was it their decision or was it your decision to July signing?
Alastair Lukies
Great. Hi, David, Great question. Just a quick remind us sort of instead scenario that were okay, Monitise over the years, we are a slightly bigger company now. But if you think back to 2009, when we first signed our major deal with Visa Inc. for LiveWire Visa Europe and obviously the other partners as well. We were negotiating deals with companies many, many times of our size. These deals can take quite a long time to negotiate that the deals that we refer to and they not of log in, it’s just the two deals that we refer to in this announcement and what does the sort of the most imminent one they were in a pipeline, but they started being negotiated some time ago.
We absolutely when we announced the shifting the business model went back them for complete transparency. We knew, but the time when we announced it all our existing customers and those that were in the pipeline, but want to say, okay what is it mean to us. How this is going to exchange our engagement with you.
So, we went back to the partners we had some very, very positive conversions with not just these two, many, many other partners. They are going a way that sat down like we haven’t and look to they’re negotiating spreadsheets. And they come back and they said yes, we understand the model. We understand the 10% of a big numbers a lot better than 100% of nothing for all of us. And so I would say by mutual agreement, we’ve taken to our board obviously we have a very strong boards for a company of our size, we sat down with the board and we said look. We think that this deal on the table, we could probably accelerate and close this deal today. But we think that there is probably a better deal for us in our shelves, does it we hold on now, I guess is the right phrase to use.
And sort of – I want to be incredibly complimentary about these two potential partners. Because we believe they are going to become formal partners very soon, but you’re already on the caller, of being around the block ahead. These are very, very big companies who look at when our year end is, they look at when we have to report and they themselves their business is that is driven by quarterly sales cycles. And I believe they felt like they were in a much stronger negotiating position than us.
I believe what we’ve done is the sale of strength from our company, we’ve gone out publicly and we said, we’re not going to be squeezed into sub-optimal deals anymore just because with this small guys in this ecosystem. We have massive, massive value to add that the glue between with all of these big partners, and I think you’re going to see – we much more confident about the deals that we saw in going forward.
David T. Mulholland – UBS Ltd.
Just one clarification, which I can – can you just confirm whether these would have been new customers or whether they might have been renewals.
Alastair Lukies
Both would have been near in the contract of then contracting to by our technology, one of them is a partner we already work within other area.
David T. Mulholland – UBS Ltd.
That’s good. Thanks very much.
Alastair Lukies
Great question that was.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from (indiscernible).
Unidentified Analyst
And just a quick one on your new platform, so Monitise Central Platform supposed to be ready by Q1 2015 according to what I understand. Just to clarify how is that different, how is that in addition to the platforms that you’re working on in December 2012 when you raised £100 million, if I remember correctly. And what gives you confident that this is actually the last (indiscernible) and from then on you’ll be able to onboard customers innovative away and you will not need to spend massively on CapEx anymore.
Alastair Lukies
Yeah. Hi Alex, great question. And I’m sorry that I don’t have instantly to hand the stats. We lost that. I think I put pretty good view, when we did a capital raise back in 2011, that you place…
Unidentified Analyst
2012.
Alastair Lukies
Well, I think if you look back at the reporting period we would have been talking of probably stock £1 billion transactions a year. So we were a company that builds up through joint venture, if you remember we had a joint venture in the UK with link. We had a joint venture in America with Metavante FIS. We had joint ventures in Asia and we had built-up versions of all platform that was sort of localized to reach territory and each of those platforms combined was doing under £1 billion transactions a year.
And I remember people learn I don’t think with Matthew and I both at that stage, but people let then say in you’re never going to scare, if you know you’re talking about big boy games here with big banks, you will never scale. So, what we hadn’t said was we were going to fill the centralized platform, we can met the Monitise end product platform, which was going to evolve from just balance inquiries and using trials to be much more repayments transaction platform.
And obviously in the statistics that we have announced today with there in wide an excessive $4 billion transactions, yes, it’s huge amounts of scales going into the platform and of course, we’re talking about £88 billion worth of payments and transfers, so we said we done exactly what we said do, we build a centralized platform that builds confidence with banks and payments parts and consumers to do more with the app that they have in the front screen of their phone.
So that was that something we said we do with our capital we made very good use of that capital remain debt free and method unquestionably the world’s lead pure play mobile banking and pilot platforms storm, it’s four of the top five independent analyst in the world in our space fully best in class year-on year.
So, I think that’s included the return on investment. But events this year we placed our bets, we are not provide of that – we’re very, very confident about them. We said now is the time for commerce. Now is the time the tens of millions, I mean hundreds of millions of consumers have a banking app for (indiscernible) that are going to stop we more than just pay, they are going to start to buy stuff.
And so what we said with the capital raise early this year is we’re going to complete the task, we’re going to finish off the pyramids, we’re going to open up the API to a new sets of users and new set of partners in retailers and affiliate networks and loyalty equipment companies and that’s all are going to become part of this global center called the MCP.
The good news Alex and driven also on the call is an all started from scratch. And that’s being proven beyond the (indiscernible) because yet, is one of the first examples of that deployment, it’s plugged into banks, it’s plugged into mobile operators and plugged into over 200 retailers. But that’s a standalone iteration of that platform.
What we’re referring to Alex for Q1 2015 is the launch of a globally accessible open-API model where actually whether it’s content from the UK or content from Spain or content from Germany or content from North America. It’s all accessible to all our partners and if you imagine that for a big brand like, let’s say a Nike or Visa even who is already a customer of ours, what an amazing ecosystem for them to be able to plug into and say, yes, I want to distribute my content to people globally. I then have Elizabeth looking to…
Elizabeth Buse
I would just add very simply that we are not rebuilding the Monitise Enterprise Platform. We are not rebuilding the Monitise Vantage platform, which is what has been implemented in North America. We are adding capabilities that can be used by those financial institutions that have adopted our mobile banking platform and can be used by other partners who have their own or other versions of mobile banking services additive to our existing partners and it dramatically expand our reach to create kind of a bit of a Chinese menu in that. If you have banking software you can still use, okay, and buy products and/or continue to add content to provide even more functionality to those clients who today are using each one of those services from us.
Alastair Lukies
And just a final one from me, very much better for pilots, but to me, Alex you yourself remember when we first spoke, we’re a strong believer that the mobile operators had a really big role to play in this space and that we were probably facing a very big bet on banks. I’m still as confident as ever, perhaps more confident that, yes, regulating because we have one of the bank be your front screen app, because we are starting to see some companies ranging from bitcoins to other things, companies store and took your money without expecting to be regulated and I think that’s just not going to happen.
So, I think but you yourself said it publically in a report you wrote about us, Monitise isn’t exposed to mobile operators, what if they win. Other people senses Monitise isn’t exposed to retailers, what if they win. Great news is we’re exposed to all three of them now and we’re helping them come together. So being the sticky glue in the middle, I think is a very valuable place for us to be.
Unidentified Analyst
Okay. Thank you very much.
Andrew Griffin
We have no further questions. So we’ll close the Q&A there and Al, I’ll hand you back for the closing comments.
Alastair Lukies
Lovely bank script. Well, look, it’s so great because I’ve seen the number of the people on the call. So if nothing else, yes, Monitise is in the public more than ever before. Our ridge which is lot of ridges right from my perspective, as many of you know, I’ve been doing this for some time. I’ve never been more assured about our role in the ecosystem. It was funny. Someone called me last week when they heard some of these rumors that we addressed earlier about certain banks having a point of view, certain middle managers in a bank having a point of view about Monitise’s role in the ecosystem. We’ve never ever, in fact we’ve gone out of our way to say every bank is going to have its own view about the roles, every mobile operator and retailer as we’ve seen through joint ventures called AGIT’s or we or MCX, people are going to try lots and lots of different things.
Monitise is adding picks and shovels to the gold rush. Monitise believes that 10% of a big number is a lot better than 100% of nothing. And I do not see a company anywhere near us in this space. So we’re debt free. We have almost £150 million starting on our balance sheet. We have an amazing team of people and a brilliant set of partnerships. They’re all dedicated to us for the long-term. So I think we’re in better shape than ever before and I really appreciate the fact that many of you dialed into this call today.
Andrew Griffin
Thanks everyone and good morning. Good afternoon.
Alastair Lukies
Thanks a lot (indiscernible).
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our call for today. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.
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