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Manx Telecom
EdisonTV | Technology | 05/09/2018
Executive interview – Manx Telecom
Manx Telecom [AIM: MANX] is the leading provider of broadband and telecommunications services on the Isle of Man. The company provides a full range of fixed, mobile, broadband, data, hosting and managed services to consumers, businesses and the public sector. The company’s global solutions business provides solutions for the international traveller and internet of things markets. More recently the company has established Vannin Ventures, a wholly owned ventures subsidiary which invests in and incubates technology companies. In this video interview, CEO Gary Lamb introduces Manx and describes the key elements of the company’s ongoing transformation process, explaining what he expects it to achieve for the core domestic operations. He describes the company’s global solutions business, explaining how the company leverages its core operations to support the growth of these operations. He also explains the rationale for setting up Vannin Ventures, describing how the business unit operates and how it adds value to the companies it invests in. He discusses Vannin’s key investment, Goshawk Communications, a technology company that enhances the experience of calls for the hard of hearing. He rounds off by describing how management balances maintaining dividend payments while ensuring that the businesses growth opportunities receive adequate investment.
Smarttech247 – executive interview
Smarttech247 is a cybersecurity company specialising in managed detection and response, providing actionable insights, 24/7 threat detection, investigation and response. The company has operations in Ireland, Poland, Romania, the UK and the US and listed on AIM in December 2022.
In this interview, CEO Raluca Saceanu outlines the key drivers of demand for cybersecurity technology and services and explains how Smarttech247 fits into the cybersecurity landscape. She provides background on why and how the business was founded and the type of customers the company serves. Growth plans include geographic expansion, growing the number of partnerships and a new mid-market offering. She discusses the ongoing development of the core VisionX platform, including its AI capabilities, and additional products such as NoPhish and ThreatHub. Finally, she outlines the company’s plans over the next 12 months, including the potential for strategic M&A.
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22/04/2024 |
IP Group - executive interview 08/04/2024
IP Group is UK’s most active investor in science-based companies, with a focus on life sciences, deeptech and cleantech. In this interview, Greg Smith, CEO of IP Group, discusses the company’s FY23 results and its continued focus on a narrow set of more mature companies with multiple near-term inflection points. He also elaborates on the cash runway across its portfolio, the more than £200m holding-level gross cash and IP Group’s approach to capital allocation in the context of the current funding environment across venture capital markets. Moreover, he explains the recent valuation changes across IP Group’s portfolio. Finally, he talks about the main long-term tech themes IP Group is focusing on at present, including digital transformation, the AI opportunity, data transmission (eg 5G), more efficient computing, as well as human-machine interface.
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08/04/2024 | IP Group
Tinexta – executive interview
In this interview, Josef Mastragostino, chief investor relations officer of Tinexta, provides an overview of the company’s FY23 results and the outlook for the coming year. Josef begins by talking about the FY23 results and focuses on the Cyber Security division, which delivered strong profitability. He then discusses the intra-divisional synergies that are growing in significance for the group, and the recently acquired ABF Group, which was Tinexta’s largest ever acquisition. Josef concludes by giving an overview of the new financial guidance for FY24, which management believes will be a better year in terms of profit growth than FY23.
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26/03/2024 | Tinexta
Team Internet – executive interview
In this interview, Team Internet CEO Michael Riedl discusses Team Internet’s full-year results, which saw robust growth across both Online Marketing and Online Presence segments. He describes the structural drivers supporting the Online Marketing segment, the company’s Omni-media, Omni-monetisation Platform (OM2) vision to build a unified customer acquisition platform and how the recent acquisition of Shinez plays into this.
Team Internet Group is a global internet company that derives recurring revenue from privacy-safe, AI-based customer journeys that help online consumers make informed choices, as well as from the distribution of domain names.
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19/03/2024 | Team Internet Group
Zalaris - executive interview
Zalaris is an Oslo-listed leading provider of comprehensive payroll and HR solutions and services that cover the entire employee lifecycle. The company operates in 17 countries across the Nordics, DACH region, the UK and Ireland and Asia-Pacific, serving over 1.5 million employees every month across all its HR solutions.
In our first interview with founder and CEO Hans-Petter Mellerud, he begins by introducing the company and discussing the two business verticals, Managed Services and Professional Services. He explains Zalaris’ positioning within the growth markets of business process outsourcing and human capital management. Hans-Petter goes on to discuss the partnership with SAP, which is key to the business model. He provides an overview of the recent FY23 results and discusses the strategy to hit the stated adjusted EBIT target of 12–15% by FY26. He also discusses some of the recent contract wins and the scope of work involved.
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11/03/2024 | Zalaris
IP Group showcase
IP Group helps to create, build and support IP-based companies internationally. It focuses on companies that meaningfully contribute to regenerative (renewable), healthier (life sciences) and tech-enriched (deep tech) futures. The group has investment platforms in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, China and the UK.
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07/03/2024 | IP Group
Cordel Group - executive interview
CRDL is an AIM-listed technology company that provides an end-to-end data management platform for automated rail infrastructure monitoring. At its core, the company transforms fragmented legacy datasets into a ‘single source of truth’ to monitor networks in near real time, improving safety and mitigating long-term costs. Now embedded in major railroad networks globally, Cordel is positioned to scale either through hardware sales to update legacy data or through AI-powered use cases without a proportional rise in costs.
In this interview, Cordel’s CEO John Davis provides an overview of the company and how the group’s technology seeks to optimise railroad management. Within this, we discuss what factors have enabled major wins with Network Rail (UK), Amtrak (US) and ARTC (Australia), underpinning an impressive H124 performance with revenue growth of over 100%. Additionally, John covers Cordel’s key priorities and the milestones investors should look for.
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22/02/2024 | Cordel Group
Zalaris – Equity proposition
Zalaris (OSE: ZAL) is a leading provider of comprehensive human capital management and payroll solutions. Listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange, the company has a market capitalisation of NOK1.1bn.
Zalaris works with organisations globally to deliver end-to-end employee lifecycle management, through a combination of managed services and professional services. With solutions covering over 150 countries and supporting the payroll and HR needs of more than 1.5 million employees every month, Zalaris has a competitive global footprint in this industry.
•First, it operates in the fast-growing human capital management and payroll market, forecast for 8–10% annual growth as businesses increasingly look to streamline back-office functions.
•Second, Zalaris is highly competitive in large, complex multi-country projects – an attractive sub-segment of the wider market. Its single platform approach across countries gives it a distinct advantage over less scalable peers when bidding for substantial contracts.
•Third, with the potential to serve 150 countries, Zalaris has fostered deep geographic reach and strong client relationships across a diverse range of industries. Its solutions are utilised by organisations of all types and sizes, from large multinational corporations to municipal governments. This broad industry coverage provides resilience and significant cross-sell potential.
•Fourth, with around 80% recurring revenue, a low churn rate of c 3% and an average contract duration of five years, Zalaris has predictable cash flows and clear earnings visibility due to its long-lasting customer relationships.
•Finally, there is substantial room for margin expansion and earnings growth, with management targeting 10% annual growth and a 500bp improvement in EBIT margins by 2026 through operating leverage and efficiency gains.
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09/02/2024 | Zalaris
SenSen Networks - executive interview
SenSen Networks’ CEO, Subhash Challa and CFO, Christian Stevens discuss a transformative Q224 for SenSen in which the business generated positive operating cash flows for the first time, secured important contracts in the Australia and US, and strengthened the balance sheet with a $2m (net) entitlement offer. We also discuss the company’s partnership-led growth strategy in the US, plans to strengthen the board and further cost rationalisations, which are expected to release an additional $2m of annual cost savings.
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31/01/2024 | SenSen Networks
Northern Data Group – the cloud solutions opportunity
Northern Data Group is a specialist provider of high-performance computing infrastructure solutions, leveraging a successful cryptocurrency mining heritage to expand into generative artificial intelligence (AI) cloud services and liquid-cooled data centre infrastructure.
In this interview, Karl Havard, managing director of the AI-focused cloud services division Taiga Cloud, discusses the opportunity to use Northern Data Group’s portfolio of state-of-the-art, liquid-cooled data centres and largest European NVIDIA GPU cluster to democratise fast, clean and secure compute power to start-ups, researchers and medium-sized organisations – a technology which the European market has lacked. We note that this was filmed in September and the division made progress since then.
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19/12/2023 | Northern Data Group
Intralot - Equity proposition
Intralot is a leading gaming technology and services provider with 52 live contracts across 39 countries. Listed on the Athens Stock Exchange, Intralot has a market capitalisation of €593m.
Intralot has an integrated offering covering lottery, betting, interactive gaming and ancillary services. This enables Intralot to service clients across the gaming ecosystem, from government authorities to private operators, as well as operating its own gaming licence. With proprietary technology powering activities and driving innovation, Intralot is well-positioned to capitalise on the major growth opportunities in regulated gaming markets globally.
•Intralot enjoys long-term contracts. Typically these last up to 10 years, although many contracts are extended further with a current weighted average term of 15 years.
•Intralot has built geographic diversification across 39 countries with 52 live contracts. This mitigates reliance on any single market.
•Since 2008, Intralot has delivered an impressive 89% contract renewal rate, demonstrating the stickiness of its customer relationships and the strength of its solutions.
•Intralot is focused on regulated gaming markets globally. Gaming markets are estimated to grow at a 4.5% revenue CAGR over 2022 to 2028, with opportunities in the US as 12 state lottery contracts (that are not currently clients of Intralot) open for bidding over the next three years.
•Intralot has undergone an operational restructuring, delivering substantially improved profitability. Over the past three years EBITDA has shown double-digit growth while margins have expanded from 12.2% in 2019 to an expected 36% in 2023.
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14/12/2023 | Intralot
SenSen Networks – executive interview
SenSen Networks, an Australian company, provides ‘live awareness’ technology for smart cities through its proprietary SenDISA platform. Leveraging AI and edge computing, SenDISA analyses physical spaces via cameras, sensors and devices with speed, precision and cost-efficiency.
In FY23, SenSen strategically refocused solely on the high-growth smart cities market, streamlining operations, eliminating silos and realising substantial savings. In this interview, SenSen CEO Subhash Challa discusses this refreshed strategy's progress, including the group’s largest deal yet with Australia’s heavy vehicle regulator. Subhash also outlines management’s outlook, highlighting key targets like attaining cash flow positivity.
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07/12/2023 | SenSen Networks
Delving into AI with Polar Capital’s Alastair Unwin
Edison’s Neil Shah met with Alastair Unwin, deputy portfolio manager of the UK 250 Polar Capital Technology Trust (PCT.L, market cap £2.95bn). In this interview, Alastair reflects on the technology sector’s performance in 2023, which surprised many after a difficult 2022. The economy outperformed expectations, companies benefitted from margin improvements due to 2022 cost cuts and AI emerged as a dominant market theme. We delve into AI and how Polar Capital pivoted its portfolio over the last nine months to increase exposure across the AI stack. We also learn from Polar Capital’s insights from running a dedicated AI fund for the past six years. Companies discussed include NVIDIA (NVDA.O, market cap $1.14bn), Meta Platforms (META.O, market cap $816bn), Microsoft (MSFT.O, market cap $2,765bn), Adobe (ADBE.O, market cap $271bn) and RELX (REL.L, market cap £57bn).
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07/12/2023 |
CLIQ Digital: executive interview
In this interview, filmed at the company's recent capital markets day, CLIQ Digital CEO Luc Voncken gives a brief overview of the company's activities and how it reaches its target customers. He also talks about new approaches in CLIQ's marketing of its five content strands and how the business model focuses on adding profitable customers. Luc also describes how CLIQ's reach is expanding geographically.
CLIQ Digital sells subscription-based streaming services that bundle movies and series, music, audiobooks, sports and games to consumers globally. In the first nine months of FY23, 35% of sales were generated in Europe, 59% in North America, 4% in Latin America and 4% in other regions.
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22/11/2023 | CLIQ Digital
Tinexta – executive interview
In this interview, Josef Mastragostino, chief investor relations officer of Tinexta, provides an overview of the company’s H123 results and the outlook for the remainder of the year. Josef begins by talking about the strong growth enjoyed by both the Cyber Security and Digital Trust divisions in the interim results. He discusses the progress made by the Business Innovation division, which typically demonstrates a high level of seasonality within the year, including a typical high weighting in profitability to the fourth quarter. Josef finishes by giving a broader overview of Tinexta’s H123 results, including the cash flow and the balance sheet, and highlighting the maintained financial guidance for FY23.
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11/09/2023 | Tinexta
MGI - Media and Games Invest – executive interview
In this interview, filmed at the company's recent capital markets day, MGI - Media and Games Invest CEO Remco Westermann talks about the trading conditions over the group’s first half year and what this means for its full year prospects. He discusses the fundamental shifts in the adtech market as personal identifiers are withdrawn, and what opportunities this opens for MGI, including those with connected TV. Remco also outlines his medium-term ambitions for the group.
MGI - Media and Games Invest is an advertising software platform with strong first-party games content, operating mainly in North America and Europe. It has a leading position in mobile supply-side platforms and, through the addition of demand-side capability, also offers full vertical integration in programmatic advertising on a cross-platform basis.
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04/09/2023 | MGI - Media and Games Invest
IP Group - executive interview
IP Group CEO Greg Smith discusses the group’s performance and its portfolio over the course of H1, a period in which portfolio valuations remained broadly stable, with most of the company’s 14 fundings struck at flat or higher valuations than previously and a good number now approaching catalysts for delivering value. He explains how the company’s strong financial position, with £250m in gross cash, is a strategic asset at this stage of the cycle and how he expects that cash to be deployed. He also discusses the government’s ambition for the UK to become a science superpower, IP Group’s role within this initiative and what he believes needs to happen to make this vision become a reality. He finishes by discussing the company’s position in AI, which includes companies like Featurespace (scam prevention software), but also those addressing the changing demands on computing driven by the growth of AI. The company is holding a webinar to discuss technology trends in AI on 19 September.
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16/08/2023 | IP Group
XP Power - executive interview
In this video, CEO Gavin Griggs and interim CFO David Stibbs discuss XP Power’s H123 results. They highlight the company’s solid performance during the period, with strong growth in revenue and adjusted operating profit and a reduction in gearing. They discuss the strength of the order backlog despite the expected slowing in order intake during H1, providing confidence for the remainder of FY23. Present in three end markets with structural growth drivers, management outline the key areas of investment to support long-term growth. Reflecting the company’s long-standing focus on ESG, they also highlight the publication of the company’s net zero transition plan.
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02/08/2023 | XP Power
Vantage: Investing in innovative SpaceTech companies with Seraphim’s Mark Boggett
The commercialisation of space looks to be entering a new chapter. High-profile entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk, Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos regularly make the headlines. We meet Mark Boggett, CEO of Seraphim Space Investment Trust (SSIT.L, market capitalisation £64m), who explains how the dramatic lowering of cost to put things into space is opening new opportunities and markets. The digital infrastructure that is being created in space together with algorithms to process the data efficiently is creating new markets, particularly in the areas of defence and climate.
In this interview, Mark highlights the satellite constellation segment, downlink plays (companies that get the data down from the satellites) and solutions for space debris as three areas Seraphim Space is focusing current investments in. Mark explains the importance of first-mover advantage in the commercial race for space, and how people are a key factor in Seraphim’s due diligence process when providing capital to some of the most promising companies looking to commercialise the opportunity in space.
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10/07/2023 |
Freelancer – executive interview
Freelancer is an Australia-headquartered and listed company that operates a leading global marketplace for freelancers. Through its two divisions, Freelancer and Escrow.com, management believes it is building the Amazon of services, offering solutions for labour, payments and freight. The Freelancer division comprises two businesses, Freelancer.com and Loadshift. Freelancer.com has more than 67 million registered freelancers across 247 countries, regions and territories, covering c 2,700 different skill sets, and offers cost-effective solutions for almost all job requirements. Loadshift is Australia’s largest heavy haulage marketplace, processing an annual volume of 75,000–80,000 loads worth between c A$300m and A$350m. Its other division, Escrow.com, offers a payments platform for high-value or complicated payments, and processes c US$1bn of payments annually.
In this interview, Freelancer’s CEO Matt Barrie discusses the company’s history and its three businesses in more detail. He also talks about the group’s FY22 results and explores the significant growth potential for all three businesses for FY23 and beyond.
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05/07/2023 | Freelancer
Airtasker – executive interview
Airtasker (ASX: ART) has developed and operates a community platform that connects people who need to outsource a wide range of tasks with local people who can provide them. The company was established in Australia, where it is the leading local marketplace in terms of jobs posted (currently 200k per month) and total value of services exchanged through the platform (A$250m per month), and is now growing its presence in the UK and US. The company recently announced that Channel 4 is taking a 20% stake in Airtasker’s UK subsidiary in exchange for A$6.5m of free advertising spend.
In this interview Airtasker’s founder and CEO, Tim Fung, discusses how the company’s open, local and infinitely horizontal model differentiates the offering from other B2C marketplaces such as Fiverr, Upwork or Rated People. He discusses the recently announced partnership with Channel 4 in the UK and how a similar partnership, with Seven West Media, was key to Airtasker gaining critical mass in Australia, as well as driving its growth strategy in the US. He explains the company’s unit economics, why he expects Airtasker to be cash flow positive in FY24 and what the company’s financial profile should look like as it gains critical mass in more geographies.
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03/07/2023 |