INTERIM REPORT JANUARY – SEPTEMBER 2018

JUL 1st – SEP 30 th 2018

• Net sales amounted to EUR 5 830 thousand (3 360), a 74 percent increase
• EBITDA of negative EUR 144 thousand (69) and EBITDA margin of -2.5 percent (2.1)
• EBIT of negative EUR 198 thousand (53) and EBIT margin -3.4 percent (1.6)
• Profit after tax of negative EUR 382 thousand (76).

JAN 1st – SEP 30 th 2018

• Net sales amounted to EUR 17 455 thousand (10 257), a 70 percent increase
• EBITDA of EUR 738 thousand (25) and EBITDA margin of 4.2 percent (0.2)
• EBIT of EUR 503 thousand (-27) and EBIT margin 2.9 percent (-0.3)
• Profit after tax of negative EUR 286 thousand (-229).

JANUARY- SEPTEMBER KEY DEVELOPMENTS

• Continued growth over the period fuelled by Europe and the Middle East
• The pipeline of IoT products continue to mature and enter the commercialisation stage
• Costs incurred and expensed in the period, related to rolling out a proprietary IoT solution in Haiti and finalizing the development of other IoT solutions, caused a temporary negative EBITDA in Q3
• Bond market debut, with an oversubscribed SEK 24 million senior note offering in the Swedish market
• Talkpool IoT server software development was insourced, to further build up in-house know how and capabilities

CEO COMMENTS

Talkpool Group continued to grow during the third quarter thanks to a positive development in Europe and the Middle East. A significant revenue growth in Saudi Arabia, increasing order volumes within the traditional Camouflage business in Holland and steady revenue increase with Deutsche Telekom in Germany fuelled the growth: This despite the fact that these operations are still in a build-up phase with focus on investments in recruitment, training and delivery of high quality services. The moderate revenue growth in Talkpool Pakistan were not reflected in the consolidated group revenue in Euro due to exchange rate effects.

In both our major entities in Haiti and Pakistan investments were made in the implementation of new service delivery processes, tools and training. In Haiti a workforce management system together with new work processes were developed and implemented and new staff was hired and trained to increase the efficiency and manage the costs in the Fuel Management project as well as in the long-term Operation and Maintenance projects.

The rollout of Talkpool’s proprietary IoT solution for surveillance and control of mobile network sites in Haiti started in the second quarter and continued in Q3. The solution was developed by Talkpool Pakistan and has already been installed on thousands of Telenor sites in Pakistan. In order to adapt the solution to Digicel Haiti’s requirements, major investments were made in the backend system and in the customer user-interface as well as in the system deployment in Haiti, by both Talkpool Pakistan and Talkpool Haiti. The Fuel Management System has now been implemented on a majority of the planned sites in Haiti and this will have a significant impact on the control of the site fuel consumption and the fuelling process. Talkpool Pakistan gains from a freshly updated system that is ready to be sold on many markets worldwide and Talkpool Haiti will gain largely from the automation of the fuel management that until now has been mainly manual and hence very resource intensive. Last but not least, our customer Digicel Haiti will profit from the new system by getting real time information about the consumption and availability of fuel on each site and can thanks to this optimise the fuelling process and prevent theft and network outages, resulting in big cost savings and revenue assurance.

Talkpool Saudi Arabia managed to almost double its revenue compared to Q2. Saudi Arabia is on an aggressive modernisation path and this creates a major opportunity for top tier Network Engineering organisations and solution providers. With the launch of IoT in the Middle East Talkpool is well positioned to provide the market with top line IoT-solutions focusing on Environment, Water conservation and Building automation. 

During the third quarter, we saw a positive development in the interest and readiness from the market to adopt the new IoT technology and integrate it in their business processes. Many customers that have taken their time to evaluate our solutions and develop their in-house IoT strategy have now reached a point where they are ready to make a decision and place volume orders. To meet this upcoming demand Talkpool has made significant investments and efforts to formally commercialize and launch our IoT products and solutions for smart buildings and cities, measuring and controlling the indoor and outdoor environment quality. Talkpool has been in the IoT market for several years preparing and positioning the company for the uptake to come and we are now all set to deliver volume orders to our customers.

This spring Talkpool was awarded the ITSM initiative price 2018 for the environmental supervision project “Luft och Vatten med Internet of Things” (LoV-IoT) in Gothenburg. This award confirmed Talkpool’s already strong position as an IoT specialist in environmental supervision. In September Talkpool went to Chile together with the other LoV-IoT project members to promote air and water supervision with IoT using the pilot project in Gothenburg as role model. The visit, involving meetings with Chile’s minister of Environment, and Mario Molina, Nobel Prize winner of Chemistry, marks the start of a large-scale test project in Santiago, Chile.

During the third quarter the Talkpool IoT server software development was insourced to Talkpool Pakistan from the previous subcontractor in India. A new development department was set up and new engineers have been hired and trained on our products. This is in line with our plan to utilize the skilled and efficient staff of Talkpool Pakistan to support the business units and the market units in the group with internal services, product development and service delivery. The investment will pay off in the future and guarantee the access to cost efficient in-house competence and high-quality services.

In August Talkpool closed the debt financing round by issuing a two-plus-one year senior secured note of SEK 24 million. The bond is not dilutive to existing shareholders. The proceeds will be used for working capital and repaying existing loans.

Q4

Talkpool Saudi Arabia stroke a major deal with Ericsson Saudi for deployment and integration of the networks being built for the operators Mobily and Saudi Telecom(STC) in KSA. Talkpool has earlier been providing support for network implementation and network upgrades for Ericsson KSA and based on good performance Talkpool was awarded the new contract. The project will continue over several years and Talkpool’s assignment for the first phase is expected to last for around 15 months with good chances of extensions.

In October Talkpool and Shell performed an IoT radio test on a floating oil platform outside the Norwegian coast. The test successfully showed Shell the benefit of using Talkpool’s IoT sensor connectivity technology in the challenging radio environment on their oil platforms. Oil platforms are one of the many industrial applications of IoT solutions with huge potential.

JoorsChain announced that its cryptocurrency by the name of JoorsCoin (JIC) was listed and traded on the Hotbit.io cryptocurrency exchange starting, November 1st. Talkpool is one of the founding partners of JoorsChain, and provides the blockchain and smart contract expertise to the project.  

Erik Strömstedt, CEO

This information is inside information that Talkpool AG is obliged to make public pursuant to the EU Market Abuse Regulation. The information was submitted for publication, through the agency of the contact person set out above, at 09:00 CET on November 27, 2018.

THIS IS TALKPOOL

Talkpool builds, maintains and improves telecommunication networks globally. Through its cutting-edge technical expertise, long experience and agile business model, Talkpool offers global telecom vendors and operators high-quality services on short notice no matter the location. Moreover, Talkpool is one of few companies with complete solutions and contracts in place in the emerging IoT-market.

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