We're pleased to announce strong interim results for 2023 with record transaction values and revenues up 43% to £45.0 million, including £13.6 million derived from the Solutions platform.
The results also saw further improvements to gross profit margin, increasing to 52.4% from 47.4% and adjusted EBITDA* more than doubled to £9.8 million compared to same period last year.
Operational highlights from the first half of the year include the acquisition of Oonex, now known as Equals Money EU, which allows access to the EU market, and the acquisition of back-end open banking technology Roqqett.
Additional product and operational highlights include the automation of "payments out" flows, further investments into compliance and risk functions, and an API integration to Equals Platform deployed, opening new distribution channels.
Equals has plans for the remainder of 2023 to continue to invest in its product offering and make money movement as easy as possible for businesses, all the while keeping customer experience at the heart of our mission.
We also announced a strong trading update for Q3 2023, with year-to-date revenue of £63.6 million, 39% ahead of the same period in 2022, and revenues per day of £370k, compared to £265k in the same period in 2022.
Our CEO Ian Strafford-Taylor said:
“This is an outstanding set of results with record revenues combining with improved gross profit retention to yield enhanced profitability. These results, coupled with our continued cash generation, enable us to announce our intention, conditional, inter alia, upon the completion of the proposed capital reduction, to pay our maiden dividend of 1.5 pence per share in respect of the financial year 2023, while continuing our growth strategy. A further announcement will be made in due course following the conclusion of the capital reduction process.
“As well as strong financial performance, the Group completed its acquisition of Oonex SA (subsequently renamed Equals Money Europe), a Brussels-based payments services provider regulated by the National Bank of Belgium. This acquisition enables Equals to widen its distribution and addressable markets and the integration of the business is proceeding according to plan.
“The first half of 2023 saw strong growth which has continued into Q3 despite an uncertain macroeconomic environment. Given the current trading, and a robust sales pipeline, we look to the future with increased confidence, and we expect to be ahead of expectations for the full year.”
* Adjusted EBITDA is defined as operating profit before: depreciation, amortisation, impairment charges and share option charges and items of an exceptional nature. EBITDA is defined as operating profit before depreciation and amortisation.
**Percentages are calculated based on underlying rather than rounded figures.
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