News - Wireless

{mosimage}Bango, the mobile web platform provider based in Cambridge, drove up revenues and slashed losses in the year to March 31 but is continuing its hardline efficiency drive in a push for profitability.

Bango’s revenue increased 32 per cent to £13.76 million while gross profits rose by 12 per cent to £2.77m. Net losses for the year were cut to £1.58m from £2.92m in 2007.

The company says it experienced revenue growth in all territories in which it operates, with the UK up 26 per cent and USA & Canada 54 per cent higher.

CEO Ray Anderson said: “After a year in which we focused on improving our sales and marketing productivity, we enter the new year close to break-even on a monthly basis, with significantly lowered costs of sale, and strong signs that mobile web usage is accelerating.”

Chairman Lindsay Bury added that the plan for the year was to drive towards profitability and cash generation; through cost cuts and higher sales, Bango reduced losses at EBITDA level from a £240K/month average in the last financial year to £144K/month average in the first half and then to £93K/month average in the second  – with continued progress towards break-even during the final months of the half year.
 
Bury added: “While increasing sales will drive profitability, we believe there are still opportunities to improve our efficiency, to enable us to capitalise on market growth from a position of financial strength.

“Bango currently has no borrowings and the directors believe the company has sufficient resources to meet its current financial needs. However, we further believe that additional capital could be deployed to beneficial effect. 

“For example, Bango has recently accelerated the timing of cash payments to some content providers, for a fee, to enable faster re-investment by them in search  engine marketing with Google, Yahoo or others. Consequently a number of initiatives are under active evaluation.”

More than 9,000 new content owners signed up to use the Bango system during the year, a more than fivefold increase in sign-up rate. Larger organisations such as Gameloft, WWE, EA Games, MTV and Paramount Studios are customers, alongside thousands of much smaller companies and individuals. 

The new Bango Analytics product, released in February, was first to market and is receiving excellent reviews.
  
Gartner (IT) forecasts the mobile advertising market to grow to £5.5 billion in global revenue in 2011, up from less than £500m a year in 2007.

Tools such as Bango Analytics, which can improve the return on this investment, should be able to attract a significant part of this expenditure.