2nd Aug 2019 12:20
(Alliance News) - App management and data intelligence platform appScatter Group PLC said on Friday its loss widened in 2018 as revenue fell sharply.
In its belated annual results, the company recorded a pretax loss of GBP11.0 million on a revenue of GBP951,354. In 2017, the company made a pretax loss of GBP6.3 million on a revenue of GBP1.9 million. appScatter said revenue fell as a result of a change in accounting procedure.
The widened loss was in part due to cost of sales increasing to GBP2.6 million from GBP856,101 million year-on-year.
Administrative expenses rose 15% to GBP8.5 million from GBP7.4 million in 2017. The company attributed this to staff, sub-contractor, and hosting costs.
appScatter said in June that its 2018 results would be delayed because of "an agreement between the company's management and the auditors to commission an up to date independent valuation of Priori Data GmbH to support its proposed carrying value".
Looking ahead, appScatter said the remainder of 2019 is "set to be very exciting" and the "expected benefits from the Priori acquisition are beginning to show through".
App intelligence firm Priori was acquired in July 2018 for GBP13.5 million and digital solutions platform Abilott Ltd was purchased by appScatter in December last year for an initial GBP825,000.
Looking ahead, the company said it has introduced cost-cutting measures by restructuring Priori's sales team, centring it in London rather than Berlin, and "significantly" reducing the costs of cloud hosting services. appScatter said these cutbacks are expected to save more than USD100,000 per month.
Chief Executive Philip Marcella said: "I am pleased today to release our 2018 annual report, with our investment into the appScatter platform and the completion of the two strategic acquisitions, we have built the foundations for our goal to build a combined single platform for app publishers and developers.
"As a result of last year's progress we were able to announce the proposed acquisition of Airpush Inc, if approved by shareholders the new enlarged group will have 1.8 million registered users and a single platform to build, distribute, secure and monetise apps whilst having the market intelligence to truly promote apps to the correct audience."
The company said in April that it intended to raise GBP2.2 million to fund the acquisition of US-based Airpush, which specialises in app monetisation, data sales, data security, and e-commerce.
Airpush, appScatter said in a separate announcement on Friday, has entered a partnership with mobile building platform Andromo BV.
Marcella said: "To be able to include such an exciting and popular service into our new single platform is extremely satisfying. Alongside app management, market intelligence, monetisation solution, app development is a critical area that we want to offer our customer base.
"Subject to the completion of the acquisition, we can already look forward to providing a truly unique end to end service to the market."
Shares in appScatter were untraded in London on Friday, last closing at 17.20 pence each.