AppScatter losses widen as it pursues acquisition strategy

App management and data intelligence platform provider appScatter Group reported a fall in revenue to £0.95m in its final results on Friday, from £1.94m a year earlier.

The AIM-traded firm swung to a gross loss of £1.64m in the year ended 31 December 2018, from a gross profit of £1.08m in the 2017 financial year, while its operating loss widened to £10.12m from £6.29m.

Its basic and diluted loss per share narrowed to 0.25p from 0.46p year-on-year.

Looking at its operational highlights, the board noted the completion of the acquisition of Priori Data for £10.6m, which it said enhanced the company’s capabilities to provide market leading, data-led app insights.

It also completed the acquisition of Abilott for an initial consideration of £0.8m, which it said enabled the group to increase its offering of security products and improve margins.

Strategic partnerships were concluded during the year with Dow Jones, Iron Source and IHS.

A total of £6.6m in cash was raised, £2m of which was used to fund the cash element of the Priori and Abilott acquisitions.

Funds were raised at a “significant” premium to the prevailing market price, the board said.

Operating cash flow improved by £2m to an outflow of £6.2m, down from £8.2m in 2017.

An advisory board was established during the year as well, to further support the plc board in enhancing appScatter's offerings and opportunities.

Since the period ended, appScatter had announced its intention to acquire the entire issued share capital of US-based Airpush.

It said the transaction would enable it to “dramatically increase” its revenues from the new 1.8 million registered users across the Airpush group, and improve the quality and range of data.

That would include data from 250 million devices and 400,000 apps, all of which the firm said would complement the current 11 million apps tracked daily and the audience data from 3.5 billion devices.

Work on the Airpush acquisition was said to be “well underway”, with appScatter expecting to be able to convene a meeting of shareholders to consider and if thought fit, approve the deal following publication of the admission document.

New partnerships since the financial year ended included work with Bango, in a bid to give developers access to audiences more likely to make-in app purchasing, as well as the new joint venture with inter-arrows - appScatter Japan.

“I am pleased today to release our 2018 annual report, with our investment into the appScatter platform and the completion of the two strategic acquisitions, we have built the foundations for our goal to build a combined single platform for app publishers and developers,” said appScatter chief executive officer Philip Marcella.

“As a result of last years' progress we were able to announce the proposed acquisition of Airpush, if approved by shareholders the new enlarged group will have 1.8 million registered users and a single platform to build, distribute, secure and monetise apps whilst having the market intelligence to truly promote apps to the correct audience.

“I would like to thank all our new partners and staff for their support.”