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ADSLOT LTD. — AGM Information 2021
Jan 27, 2021
64306_rns_2021-01-27_7de10ed7-de61-4786-af5a-1cc0e21e4cad.pdf
AGM Information
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Chairman’s Address Adslot Ltd Annual General Meeting of Shareholders Thursday 28 January 2021
Ladies and Gentleman,
First of all: thank you Andrew for agreeing to Chair today’s meeting in Sydney. Sarah Morgan, Adrian Giles and I apologise that we can’t be with you all in person.
Today, I’ll keep my address reasonably brief, and allow the Company’s CEO, Ben Dixon, to cover things in more detail in his presentation.
The Company’s focus in financial and calendar year 2020 was to grow Trading Fee revenue by delivering consistent growth in the value and volume of media traded on the Adslot Media platform. This was to be achieved by focussing on four key objectives:
The first objective was to execute Master Service Agreements, or MSAs, with as many of the six global agency holding companies as possible.
The second objective was to then activate that agency demand on the Adslot Media marketplace.
The third strategic objective was to expand our sources of supply by signing up as many premium publishers to our platform as possible.
And finally, from a company-wide operational perspective, we wanted to maintain careful cost management disciplines to maintain the more efficient cost base achieved in the prior two years.
In relation to the first strategic priority, I am pleased to report that the Company has now signed Master Service Agreements with three of the six largest media agency holding companies in the world. In addition, the Company has an active interim trading agreement with a fourth holding company; has completed initial pilot activity with a fifth; and has recently progressed discussions with the sixth agency holding company.
It’s also worth mentioning that in the last six months, the Company has signed MSAs with two further independent media agencies, which have both commenced trading on the platform.
In addition, Adslot also focussed on realising Trading Fees from its first iteration of the combined Adslot-Symphony platform in the test market of Austria. This has resulted in consistent growth in Trading Fees out of Europe, in spite of the economic impact of COVID19 during the period. These Trading Fee revenues have continued to grow in the last two quarters, and we expect that trend to continue in 2021.
The third strategic objective in FY20 was to expand sources of premium publisher inventory on the Adslot Media platform to meet growing demand.
The Company made significant progress in this area, signing many new premium publishers, including Associated Newspapers (publishers of the Mail Online, the Daily Mail and Metro in the UK), Bloomberg, the Financial Times, Business Insider and WebMD, to name but a few.
In addition, the Company signed and implemented data partnerships with Oracle Data Cloud and Liveramp during the year, greatly enhancing the audience targeting capabilities of the Adslot Media platform.
Adslot’s core business of Symphony continued to perform well in FY20. A strategic partnership integration with Marathon in April 2020 also led to the signing and deployment of Symphony for Omnicom Media Group in the Netherlands. More integrated deployments in partnership with Marathon are expected in Europe in 2021.
Finally, our fourth strategic priority was to continue our focus on cost management.
To that end, we saw a further reduction in operating costs (down 9%), with the Company’s Adjusted EBITDA Loss reducing from $2.6M in FY19 to $1.2M in FY20. Adjusted NPAT Loss also reduced from $7.0M in FY19 to $5.1M in FY20.
In addition, the Company undertook further cost reduction initiatives in March 2020 following the onset of COVID-19, including all directors not taking any fees for seven months, while key executives and staff took salary cuts of up to 30% for a good part of the year.
From a cash perspective, cash receipts grew 11% from $17.4M in FY19 to $19.3M in FY20. The Company reported a closing cash balance of $6.2M as at 30 June 2020, and the Company is currently holding $7.48M as at 31 December 2020, following a recent, small capital raising.
Although the impact of the pandemic, social unrest and political instability in the US and other markets caused unexpected delays and logistical problems throughout calendar 2020, the Company still managed to achieve four consecutive quarters of trading growth on Adslot Media in that period. Agency engagement levels are at an all-time high, and the management team have great confidence in delivering strong growth in Trading Fees in 2021.
In closing, the rest of calendar 2021 will be focused on five key strategic and operational initiatives:
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First: driving activation and trading activity from previously signed global agency holding companies;
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Second: executing Master Service Agreements (MSAs) with the three remaining global agency holding companies;
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Third: deploying further markets for the integrated Adslot-Symphony platform and securing additional activations of Adslot Media private marketplaces;
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Fourth: exploring opportunities to activate the Adslot Media marketplace with existing Symphony customers, leveraging the Symphony-Marathon partnership where possible; and
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Fifth: maintaining our focus on careful cost management.
In summary: the Board and Executive team believe the Company is well-positioned to realise material trading fees from Adslot Media in 2021, following our record trading quarters in the September and December 2020 quarters. I think we’ve seen only a small hint of what’s possible, and what’s to come.
In closing, I’d like to thank all our staff for their hard work and loyalty throughout what has been an incredibly difficult and challenging year. I’d also like to thank all shareholders for their continued patience and support of the Company. I’m confident the Company will see great fruits from its labour very soon, and investors’ patience will be well-rewarded.
We are looking forward to a big 2021. Thank you.
Andrew Barlow Chairman
* Adjusted EBITDA and NPAT loss is after adding back impairment of Goodwill of $10.0M and once off provision for FY16 R&D Claim of $1.5M to the Unadjusted EBITDA loss ($12.7M) and Unadjusted NPAT loss ($16.6M).