July 29, 2021 02: 30 ET | Source: GeoJunxion N.V.
Capelle aan den Ijssel, The Netherlands 29 July 2021 – GeoJunxion significantly increases order intake and shows encouraging Q2 and 1H2021 YoY topline growth.
Looking back at the first half of 2021 and more specifically at the second quarter, Covid-19 and its related measures are still proving to be a significant challenge for the global economy. However, the GeoJunxion team and our underlying business continued to show strong resilience and improved performance during Q2: Revenue during the past quarter has grown by 30% compared to the same quarter in 2020. For the first half of 2021, revenue increased by 20% compared to the same period last year. Thanks to an extraordinary Q2 performance, our order intake for the first half of 2021 doubled compared to the same period last year. We are continuously encouraged by the market response regarding our new premium location aware products and intelligence location services, which have resulted in the increased strength of our pipeline. It is also worth noting that Q2 order intake is more diversified than ever across all our product lines and services, as well as between new and recurring multi-year business opportunities.
OPERATIONAL HIGHLIGHTS AND STRATEGY UPDATE
Market Developments
COVID restrictions still influence the willingness to spend, therefore companies remain extremely cautious in their investments. This applies across all market verticals in particular within travel, leisure and events. However, signs of improvement are coming from large IT companies and others, specifically for Smart Cities solutions, Transports and Logistics and the Automotive and Autonomous driving sectors.
Business Development
In the second quarter of this year, we continued to focus on our new High Alert Zones family of products, in particular on Eco Alert Zones and Safety Alert Zones. The strongest traction from the market remains on Eco Alert Zones where we expanded our unique value proposition of fully attributed, global, and authoritative coverage of Low Emission Zones, Congestion areas and Limited Traffic zones, which we have extended to Heavy Vehicles as well. Eco Alert Zones are today the most requested data suite, both by existing customers and prospects. Safety Alert Zones have also started attracting current customers and new prospects, therefore opening up new business opportunities within Transports and Logistics, Automotive and the Insurance market.
Our Outdoor Venue Plan and Intelligence Location Services are also getting traction. We see increased interest from Municipalities for the development of information systems and bespoke data suites related to Smart Cities applications and services. Public and private companies are showing interest in alternative Mobility plans, Real Estate and, to a certain extent, also travel, leisure and tourism, in spite of limited investment capabilities due to Covid restrictions.
Outdoor Venue Plan – use case for the Real Estate and Mobility Management markets
We continue to experience an increased number of visitors to our website, thanks to various lead generation activities and monthly webinars, with growing number of registrants and attendees. Recordings of all webinars are available on our website in the Resources section, at “Events and Webinars”.
Product Development
In the second quarter of the year, we continued to invest in improvements and expansion of our core High Alert Zones product suite: Eco, Safety and Health Alert Zones. We actively worked to improve our Eco Alert Zones including non-passenger vehicles and Heavy Vehicles over 3.5 tons. This new authoritative and dynamic dataset, which will be launched in the coming months, is in perfect alignment with the GeoJunxion’s mission to foster safety and sustainability through location-aware content.
We also released our first mobile app, GeoAlertsLive for iOS and Android, with the primary goal of demonstrating the value of our High Alert Zones, but also to open a new and direct channel into the market and get feedback from B2B customers and B2C users to further improve and customize our Eco, Safety and Health Alert Zones. The app is already available with a freemium business model on Google Play Store and Apple Store.
GeoAlertsLive app – Eco Alerts for Low Emission, Congestion and Limited Traffic Zones
We continued to invest in our API technology to improve and optimize the delivery mechanisms of our highly dynamic, map agnostic value-added products.
In response to the increased demand of hyper local content, we are refining our suite of algorithms and methods for the automatic generation of various types of boundaries and polygons. Based upon this advanced technology we should be in a position to release a new premium product for Built-Up Areas with worldwide coverage.
A built-up area (BUA) is a boundary that encloses a densely urbanized area. These areas are characterized by a higher population density than surrounding areas and give shape to the cities, towns, and larger villages.
Built Up Areas – example of urbanized areas with different characteristics
During the second quarter of the year, we also released a new dataset containing the aggregated information for kindergartens and schools in Germany, designed for specialized vertical markets such as Real Estate, Finance and Investments, GIS, Geo and Direct Marketing. This will also be the base for extending our Safety Alert Zones in other countries and for many other applications and markets.
Partner & Alliances
Our partnership & alliances program received an additional boost over the course of Q2.
Our partnership with ESRI has been re-enforced via the strengthening of the relationship with the US headquarters and local European subsidiaries. Esri is the global market leading solution provider for Geographic Information System (GIS), with over 350,000 customers and more than 45% market share. It is an important alliance for GeoJunxion because of its market leading technology platform and the market reach of its network around the world. This partnership already brought new opportunities to our pipeline and joint offers across new prospect customers.
We are also working together on an upcoming joint event, scheduled for the end of Q3, where as guest speakers, we will be presenting our suite of products and services to a vast audience of ESRI subsidiaries and partners.
Our alliance with NavInfo was also consolidated, in particular within opportunities for Smart Cities, HD Maps and Roads and Signals Maintenance market sectors. NavInfo brings extensive and in depth know how in Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence which, which when combined with our capabilities on premium location content for road safety and sustainability, creates a unique business opportunity for both companies.
After the recent announcement of the agreement with the Province of North Brabant in the Netherlands, we started our partnership with the aim to improve asset management as well road safety in that area. Such new activity will pave the way for GeoJunxion to offer to the province its Data as a Service (DaaS).
We are also proud to announce that GeoJunxion BV was selected by #MobilityLab to join their 2021 edition focused on creating advanced solutions for sustainable mobility and safety on the road. After the selection process and product pitches we have been identified as one of the 25 companies that will work on this project.
Our focus will be on improving safety around schools, where vulnerable pedestrians are concentrated during certain times of the day. This will be realized with our School Zones, which are and will be an essential part of the Safety Alert Zones product suite.
Mobility Lab is an initiative of two mobility programs: De Verkeersonderneming from the Rotterdam region and SmartwayZ.NL, which focuses on the South of the Netherlands. Both programs are based on partnerships between various governmental institutions focused on improving accessibility in their regions. In addition, Brainport Eindhoven has been a partner to the project since 2018, and this year the province of Limburg also joined as a partner. Mobility Lab was founded in 2017 and is carrying out its fifth edition this year.
Mobility Lab – Stef Van der Helm, Enterprise Sales Manager, during the product pitch on School Zones
Order Intake / Bookings developments
Our 2021 order intake to date has doubled compared to the same period in 2020. Orders for premium location data and location Intelligence Services booked in the past quarters of the year started materializing into revenue and will continue converting into revenue during Q3 and Q4.
We would like to thank our employees, customers, shareholders, and contractors for their ongoing contribution to the turnaround of the company.
FINANCIAL SUMMARY Q2 and H1 2021 RESULTS VERSUS Q2 and H1 2020
Revenue for Q2 2021 has grown by 30.6% compared to Q2 2020. For the entire first semester 2021 a growth of 20.3% was generated compared to the same period of the previous year.Order intake for the entire H1 2021 shows a growth of 107% compared with the same period of the previous year, due to excellent performances realized during the second quarter. OUTLOOK FOR THE FULL CALENDER YEAR 2021
Covid-19 and its related measures to contain the spread have continued to hamper our business development during the past 6 months. This was particularly the case for our products aimed at the travel, leisure, and events industry, which were severely impacted by government measures and lockdowns. Despite this, we continue to experience strong market interest in our new product portfolio, resulting in solid revenue growth, a strong and healthy pipeline of opportunities. Based on the orders in hand, and the strength of the pipeline of opportunities, we reconfirm our expectation to generate a revenue growth for the calendar year 2021, in the range of 40 to 50% compared to calendar year 2020.
ORGANIZATION
During Q2, Mr. Ivo Vleeschouwers, formerly serving as GeoJunxion’s CFO, has been nominated as permanent CEO, combining the CEO and CFO functions going forward.
At the same time, Mr. Francesco Altamura has also been appointed by the Supervisory Board as GeoJunxion’s new CBO – Chief Business Officer, responsible for the Commercial, Marketing, Strategy and Business Enablement divisions.
Ivo Vleeschouwers, CEO and CFO – Francesco Altamura, CBO
REPLACEMENT OF EXTERNAL AUDITOR
We continue to explore all possible options to replace our previous OOB-licensed auditor, Grant Thornton. Partially to allow time in resolving this issue and move outside of the auditing peak season, GeoJunxion has extended the current accounting year to 30 June 2021. During the past months, we have engaged with all available OOB licensed Auditors in the Netherlands, requesting a quote for the Audit of our accounts per 30 June 2021. Mazars is not available to us as they are still in the cool down period as our 2017 auditor. To date we have received 4 rejections for the same reasons as last year. We are in ongoing conversations with one auditing firm. There is however no guarantee that these efforts will conclude in an agreement.
RISK MANAGEMENT
Risk management is an integral managerial task. Our risk management and control procedures take into consideration the size of the company and the character of the business to identify the most significant risks which the company is exposed to. The risks identified are discussed on a periodical basis and mitigated or fully resolved, where possible. Such a system cannot provide absolute certainty that objectives will be realized. Neither can it guarantee prevention of potential cases of material mistakes, damage, fraud, or breaches of statutory laws.
The 2019 annual report describes the principal strategic, operational, and financial risks. The risks and uncertainties described in the annual report are still relevant and are deemed incorporated and repeated by reference in this report. There were no cases of material damage, fraud or breaches of law detected in 2020 and the first Semester of 2021. However, the Covid-19 outbreak and the associated and prolonged pandemic control measures have had a disruptive effect on the economy and an adverse effect on our business, most noticeably in our data sales business and our last mile mapping service directed to travel, leisure and events business and the associated revenues. Although we have taken mitigating actions and lockdown measures have currently been lifted to a large extend, mainly due to the progress in the vaccination campaigns, there is no guarantee that the pandemic and its associated control measures will not have a further negative impact in 2021 on our business, financial position, and results. Our focus remains on key areas, such as social: our people and stakeholders, commercial: our customers and partners, financial: focus on costs, revenue growth, cash flow generation and liquidity, Product & Technology: further strengthen and expand product & services, as well as investing in specialized technology development to increase efficiency and quality.
On the Social aspect, we are putting particular attention on preventive actions to limit any exposure of our people to Covid-19, encouraging and supporting smart working from home, and establishing clear rules for those that need to be physically present in our offices. Our people are our key assets, and we do whatever we can to keep them safe and healthy.
GROUP STRUCTURE SIMPLIFICATION
The voluntary liquidation of AND Data India Pvt, LTD, continues to progress well: Early June 2021 we completed the repatriation of the remaining 50% of the funds available in the company. Expectation is that the liquidation of the Indian legal entity will be fully completed during August 2021.
FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS / IMPORTANT NOTICE
This document contains certain forward-looking statements with respect to the financial position and results of GeoJunxion. We have based these forward-looking statements on our current expectations and projections about future events, including assumptions regarding our present and future business strategies, operations, and the environment in which we will operate in the future. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements, and you should not place undue reliance on them.
Many of these risks and uncertainties relate to factors that are beyond the company’s ability to control or estimate precisely, such as timing of placement of orders of our customers, exchange-rate and interest-rate fluctuations, changes in tax rates, regulatory and legal changes, the rate of technological change, the competitive landscape, political developments in countries in which the company operates and the risk of a downturn in the market.
The forward-looking statements contained herein speak only as of the date they are made. We do not assume any obligation to update any public information or forward-looking statement in this document to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this document, except as may be required by applicable laws.
Ends
Capelle aan den IJssel, 29 July 2021,
Ivo Vleeschouwers – CEO / CFO