Proxama losses persist but costs slashed for 2018

Mobile location and data intelligence company Proxama have announced a sizeable increase in revenue but are still taking heavy losses.

Revenue jumped 75% to £471,993 in 2017 and the company’s cost of sales plummeted by more than two thirds to £165,719 from £579,424 in 2016.

The company’s figures show a turnaround in gross profit up at £306,274, a huge improvement on 2016’s loss of £310,362.

However, AIM-listed Proxama registered a loss of £5.4m that was 4% larger than last time, with losses from discontinued operations more than doubled to £1.85m and admin expenses swelling 14% to £4.8m.

For 2018, directors expect admin costs from continuing operations to be reduced by at least 50% as the cost base has been trimmed to its lowest ever level.

Proxama, which works with media, advertising and technology companies to leverage mobile location data for marketing purposes, is now debt-free after selling off its digital payments division in October and chief executive Mark Slade was optimistic about the company's ability to grow sales in future.

"As digital spend migrates to mobile, rising to £5.4bn in 2017 [from £3.8bn in 2016], location becomes a key component of all aspects of the campaign lifecycle. The company is therefore in a strong position to offer its products and services to both brands and agencies across any campaign with a location component.”

Slade said the team had "the right skill sets in place to monetise our 14bn-plus data points through partnership arrangements, generating recurring monthly revenues” and was encouraged by the interest seen from potential customers. He feels it is “just a matter of time” before the market will recognise the value in being able to analyse “real world movements of millions of consumers”.

As of 1124 GMT, Proxama’s shares were up 2.71% at 0.02p.