22nd Mar 2019 10:03
LONDON (Alliance News) - Maistro PLC's annual loss widened, the firm said on Friday, after investments made during 2018 but this helped it register revenue growth.
Maistro's pretax loss in 2018 widened 28% to GBP3.1 million, despite revenue nearly tripling to GBP1.5 million.
The firm's administrative expenses rose 28% to GBP3.2 million, mainly as a result of a tripling of staff costs.
Maistro, which operates an online marketplace for businesses seeking service providers, said the main focus in 2018 was investment in its procurement-as-a-service platform, especially with artificial intelligence technology.
"Maistro has made good progress during 2018 with strong sales growth and improvement in gross margin contribution," said Chair David Rowe.
"Revenue growth has been driven by the increasing use of Maistro's PaaS platform by Multinational Enterprises which will be the bedrock of the Group's growth during 2019. Ongoing investment in the PaaS platform has enabled the group to stay ahead of the field in the automated purchasing of services and sets the group up well for the work in progress in AI during 2019."
"The aspirations of the board for Maistro in 2019 are to rapidly increase the take up of the PaaS platform by its core existing and new customers driving revenues and margins," Rowe continued.
"The board remains confident the management team can achieve this, creating a very strong platform for continued leadership in this exciting and rapidly developing market."
Shares were 7.7% lower on Friday morning at 1.20 pence each.