Bango (AIM: BGO), the data-driven commerce company, today announces its Final Results for the year ended 31 December 2021.

Summary

• Delivered revenue growth of 31.5%, ahead of expectations, demonstrating continued high growth across the business;
• New platform deals won in 2021 with global telco leaders provides strong momentum into 2022
• Annual recurring revenue from subscription services grew as a proportion of overall revenues;
• Bango Audience sales accelerate, driven by demand for purchase behavior targeting by app developers;
• Bango achieves record employee engagement score and maintains carbon neutral certification in 2021, expanding commitment to include scope 3 emissions.

FY2021 Financial Highlights

• Revenue grew to $20.7M, an increase of 31.5% (2020: $15.7M);
• End User Spend (EUS) increased to $4.1B, up 73.6% (2020: $2.4B), the seventh year of continued strong growth;
• Adjusted EBITDA* grew to $6.2M (2020: $6.0M);
• Net profit from the core Bango business, excluding the share of net loss of the NewDeep associate, was up 48.6% at $2.5M (2020: $1.7M);
• Cash** at 31 December 2021 increased to $9.7M (2020: $8.0M).

*Adjusted EBITDA is earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortization and share based payment charge.

**Cash includes cash and cash held in short term investments

FY2021 Operational Highlights

• Telcos increasingly standardize on Bango as their single technology to bundle third party offers, demonstrated by 2021 platform licensing wins including Verizon;
• Range of bundled offers is quickly expanding outside of the core music and video subscription services. Recent launches with M365 (productivity), Xbox Game Pass (gaming), Norton (security) and Pray.com (wellbeing) highlight this increasing market opportunity;
• The automation and dynamic management of product SKUs, marketing assets and bundled offers enables Bango subscription bundling to achieve massive scale across merchants and telcos;
• Bango Audiences now available to marketers on TikTok, the world’s fastest growing social media platform, enabling customers to target even more paying users;
• Need for improved targeting techniques increases in the mobile gaming sector and in new high growth sectors including NFT, crypto and financial trading apps. Demand for Bango Audiences to find new paying users, shown by customer wins including Upland.

Outlook

• Competition to win new paying customers in the fast-growing online commerce market will drive growth in alternative payments, user acquisition through bundled offers and better targeting of paying users from digital marketing campaigns.
• Bango platform deals won and integrated during 2021 will drive revenue growth in 2022 and beyond, as telco customers launch new third party offers.
• Continued expansion of subscription bundling beyond TV, movies, music & gaming as more digital merchants target the benefits of bundled offers.
• Need to improve returns on digital advertising spend in a post-cookie world will drive demand for Bango Audiences and open-up new sectors including financial trading, lifestyle and retail.

Paul Larbey, Chief Executive Officer of Bango, commented:

“Once again, Bango delivered revenue growth ahead of expectations. The transactional payments business continues to grow, as we added new telco routes and mobile wallets and our merchant customers delivered new products and services. Just as exciting is the accelerating adoption of the Bango platform licensing solution by tier 1 telcos and utility providers for all of their 3rd party bundling. In 2021 we have seen our platform licensed by market leaders including BT and Verizon and the pipeline of opportunities is impressive. The recurring revenue this business brings to Bango is incremental and is expected to accelerate our growth in the coming years.

2021 saw the range of customers using Bango Audiences diversify from predominantly mobile gaming app developers to financial trading, cryptocurrency and metaverse trading apps. Our investment in sales & marketing is growing awareness of Bango Audiences, as a powerful disruptor in the market, attracting this wider range of customers.

With three powerful growth engines in the business working synergistically, Bango is well positioned to continue taking market share and moving further towards our goal of becoming the technology behind every payment choice.

News in full

Highlights from the results are presented by the board in the interview below