US growth triples Monitise
REVENUES tripled at Monitise in the first half of the fiscal year on record demand for the mobile banking group’s services, which now process an annual 480m transactions, up from 120m in 2010.
The British company raised its full year revenue guidance by 21 per cent to £34m after a successful six months which saw revenues reach £15.8m – three times the revenue of the first half of fiscal 2011.
Despite ending the period with £43m in cash and a record order book of £83m, the group reported an operating loss of £6.9m – albeit an improvement on last year’s £7.5m.
The period saw strong growth in the US, where Monitise now sells directly into the market due to its acquisition of FIS’s majority stake in joint venture Monitise Americas.
This will be boosted by last week’s announcement of a new mobile payments collaboration with Visa’s debit processing service.
The partnership with Visa also saw Monitise’s European presence grow, due to a £24.7m investment from the credit card company in October and the subsequent launch of a mobile banking alerts service.
Monitise said it expects gross margins to increase to more than 70 per cent by the end of fiscal 2013.
Chief executive Alastair Lukies said: “The platform is scaling globally through our continued investment as we deliver against our strategy. We have particularly seen momentum accelerate in the US mobile money market and we believe we are well placed to benefit from this.”
Shares teetered throughout the day, before closing level at 36.5p.