ASPERMONT LIMITED. — Call Transcript 2020

Feb 2, 2020

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3 February 2020

MANAGING DIRECTORS AGM PRESENTATION - TRANSCRIPT

Please find attached the transcript of the Managing Directors presentation which accompanies the AGM Presentation.

For further information contact Alex Kent, Managing Director +44 207 216 6060.

About Aspermont

Aspermont is ASX listed with offices in Australia, UK, Brazil, North America and the Philippines. The Company’s focus is on global media leadership in the Mining, Agriculture, Energy and Technology sectors.

The company has invested 20 years in building a commercial model for B2B digital media distribution that is founded on providing high value content to a global subscriber base. The B2B model is scalable as to new countries, new commodity sectors and in new languages.

Aspermont is now the dominant player in B2B media for the resources sector.

For more information please see: www.aspermont.com

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Transcript of Managing Director presentation for Aspermont 2020 AGM

Good Morning Ladies and Gentlemen

And welcome to our Aspermont Annual General Meeting.

I appreciate this opportunity to update you on Aspermont’s strategy and progress. We are firmly established as the leading digital media services provider to the global resource industries. Our goal is to generate new, large and growing complementary revenue streams to increase shareholder returns from a solid base.

The key takeaways for our investors from my presentation today are;

• Our top line growth established over the last 3 years is set to continue

• Our new products and services, developed over recent years, will enable solution selling to drive revenue and increase diversification via cross-sales and ARPC

• Our high-performance is confirmed by SaaS metrics, which also show that our Lifetime Value of Subscriptions is more than twice our market capitalisation which is anomalous in the media-tech sector.

• Our cash flow, margins and profitability should continue improving over FY20

Currently, Aspermont is in the process of scaling its digital platform to new countries and new sectors. Our successful management team has been together a few years now and has a good track record. Business opportunities are expanding, both by geography and sector. We are debt free and are financing new product development from our own cash flow.

Aspermont has momentum on entering a higher growth phase

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SLIDE 2 – The leading media services provider to the global resource industries

Across our titles we have over 560 years of brand heritage which confirms Aspermont to be the leading media services provider to the global resource industries

Over the past 20 years we have built our commercial model for B2B media, which provides distribution of high value content and builds premium subscription audiences.

Our model is scalable, both by sector and by geography.

Our leadership in the Mining sector is unchallenged and we are now building market share in media services for the Agriculture, Energy and the Technology sectors

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SLIDE 3 – We are not standing still, we are developing new value accretive solutions

Over the last few years we have transitioned through 3 distinct development phases and have now entered our 4[th] and most significant, growth phase.

In the first phase, we had to achieve digital distribution for our legacy business to build subscriptions and restore advertising revenues. We also cleared balance sheet debt, settled legal cases and returned to profitability.

In the second phase we invested in both content and technology platforms to facilitate premium audience build solutions. We have now delivered 14 successive growth quarters in subscriptions revenues and in all associated SaaS metrics.

Phase 3 of our development was recently completed by the launch of our new wholly owned events and research businesses which enable us to deliver a full multi-media proposition for our global readership and client communities

We are now in our 4[th] growth phase, building a full end to end marketing services suite for all clients. These new services are welcomed by clients as evidenced by our growing ARPC figures. New product launches build client incumbency and at the same time enhance our profitability- a virtuous circle indeed!

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SLIDE 4 – Our FY19 execution priorities and how we performed

Aspermont’s success comes from a complete operational alignment of our key priorities. As a team, we agree priorities and we aim to be open and transparent on our progress in execution.

The scorecard above shows our stated goals for FY 19 and measures our execution success

We made good progress in all areas and this progress has momentum going into FY20

Our Q1 investor presentation showed:

• A sharp rises in ACV and LTV

• emerging growth in lead generation revenues

• strong gains in ARPC

• high growth in Content Agency

At the end of FY19 it was clear that momentum was building for a strong FY20

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SLIDE 5 & 6 – FY19 shows solid growth and margin expansion

In headline terms, revenues grew by 17% in FY19, building on the 21% growth in FY18

Our improving gross margins reflect benefits from the significant historic investment we made to build the scalability of our model

Quite simply, Aspermont has established a broad base and is now launching new products and entering new markets to significantly enhance our future profitability.

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SLIDE 7 – shows 14 quarters of consistent subscriptions momentum

Our audience metrics show both consistency and high performance since June 2016

Over the period from June 2016, we grew our subscriptions base by 13%, lifted our pricing by 61% and reduced our churn rate by 44%.

This has generated a 73% lift in ACV and a 307% increase in LTV

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SLIDE 8 – Market Leader Competitive Strengths

Over the last few years Aspermont has

1. strengthened our content propositions to build brand strength;

2. Broadened the client base and C suite relationships;

3. Added top tier executives to strengthen and transform management teams;

4. Developed new products and services for the future and upgraded legacy products;

5. Optimised the digital tech platform and operational structures to drive scalability

Aspermont’s enhanced competitiveness assures global leadership in our key markets

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SLIDE 9 – Our Blue-chip client base of industry leaders has large spend capacity

Most of Aspermont’s Top 20 clients are Fortune 500 industry leaders

Through building end-to-end product and client services suites, we adopt solution selling approaches with success as reflected in the ARPC and cross sales ratios.

We expect to see increasing growth over the foreseeable future

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SLIDE 10 – Aspermont’s three growth horizons

At Aspermont we see our growth evolving through 3 distinct horizons with our execution nuanced to suit the focus of each

In our first horizon we have the primary businesses - advertising and subscriptions – where our teams are fully integrated, and our commercial models are already proven to be state of art.

Our second horizon is here now with our launches of new products and services – such as events and research – after in-house incubation to build scale. Once they become fully commercial, we integrate these new products into our primary businesses

In our third horizon we look ahead: we seed – with capital and management time – the products and services of our future. After incubation, new products such as lead generation and content agency, are launched in Beta mode and go through careful refinement and optimisation before being launched commercially in our global markets.

In each of our three growth horizons we curate management teams and dedicate people skills to optimise execution

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SLIDE 11 – As new business streams come online , we are also able to build a significant data base from interaction with clients to understand their marketing aspirations to work out how we can alleviate their pains to optimise their gains.

Many clients work with us to advance the development of their brands and to increase market awareness of their product and services, which we help deliver through traditional display advertising solutions

We also work with clients to distribute their messages to our global audiences through new forms of content such as blogs, articles, profiles, case studies, guides, webinars, whitepapers, video, podcasts, animation, face to face etc

Over the last few years, we have built delivery capabilities for all these different formats.

Last year we launched a content agency which enables clients to work with some of Aspermont’s’ industry leading journalists to build recognition of their value proposition.

Our sales team works with marketers in new ways to help increase the effectiveness of company advertising campaign spends and ROI. Our lead generation services can accurately track the actual performance and effectiveness of their content and marketing programs.

Sometimes we can go a step further and identify leads for client’s sales teams to remove some early hurdles along their road to successful customer conversion.

Through deeper understanding and closer client relationships we can cover a wider range of our client’s marketing needs and as our global audiences continue to grow, we can further leverage client success in tandem with our success.

Our Q1 results confirmed that we successfully launched these two new products, Lead Generation and Content Agency with an initial 3% of our revenue but set for high growth going forward.

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SLIDE 12 – Scalable growth through expansion of content and sales resources

We focussed on building our presence in the North American market over the last 18 months and our market share will continue to expand. We are now increasing our focus on the Asian markets, which will be our next key development region.

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SLIDE 13 – Our FY20 execution priorities and how investors can measure us

Earlier in the presentation we reviewed our performance against the priorities set out for FY19. Here we lay out the targets to be measured for FY20.

Our new Group People Director will help optimise our skills development, operational capacity and employee productivity

Subscriptions development will remain at our core as does our commercial teams’ transition from transactional to solution selling.

Each year we will re-invest our cash flow to upgrade and broaden our product offerings

We will continue to upgrade our ambitions in people and support their performance In parallel, we will invest in products, systems and processes to enhance that performance.

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SLIDE 14 – The outlook for FY 20 is for higher growth

We now have a proven model and are building a consistent growth record, with increasing free cash generation and improving profit margins

Our growth strategy is clear, and we can deliver the solutions our clients need and want.

Our unit economies are attractive; our fixed cost base has stabilised, and we have the people and technologies in place to deliver higher levels of growth

In FY20 we anticipate higher top-line growth, with revenue momentum improving our margins and growth flows through to the bottom line.

Thank you for your attention.