13 July 2021

Vianet Group plc
 

("Vianet" or "the Group")

AGM Statement

Vianet Group plc (AIM: VNET), the international provider of actionable data and business insight through devices connected to its Internet of Things platform ("IOT"), will be holding its Annual General Meeting ("AGM") today at 11.00 a.m. at the offices of Vianet Group plc, One Surtees Way, Surtees Business Park, Stockton on Tees, TS18 3HR.

James Dickson, Chairman, will provide the following trading update at today's meeting:

"Thanks to our proactive approach and investment in growth during the pandemic, the Group's performance in the first three months of the financial year has been very encouraging, with profits higher than anticipated with both divisions expected to return to more normal trading during H2 2022.

"Strong engagement with customers, suppliers and employees throughout the pandemic has placed the Group in an excellent position to benefit from the increased demand for data insight, remote asset management and contactless solutions as the economy recovers.   

"Our Smart Zones division is recovering in line with the UK pub market with almost 90% of pubs having re-opened by the end of June with a corresponding return to full billing.   The 'Freedom Day' removal of hospitality restrictions, on 19 July 2021, together with a return of city centre office populations will result in further pub re-openings. The re-opening of pubs has resulted in increased demand for our draught beer market and retail data insight services as the industry seeks to understand its new 'normal' trading in the post restriction era. 

"In our Smart Machines division, we are benefitting from a material increase in the use of contactless payments and demand for remote connection to unattended retail assets, which has resulted in new contracts and a healthy pipeline of promising growth opportunities across the UK and Europe.

"Our growing reputation and expertise for data capture from remote assets and contactless payment is generating significant interest, with field trials underway in the fuel forecourt and franchise kitchen sectors in the UK and internationally. 

"Although there is still global uncertainty relative to Covid-19, the Board is very confident that we have implemented the correct measures to take advantage of the exciting growth opportunities that lie ahead, and we look to the future positively and with an increased level of confidence."

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About Vianet

Vianet Group is a leading provider of actionable management information and business insight created through combining data from our smart Internet of Things ('IOT') solutions and external information sources.

Since Admission to AIM in 2006, the Group has grown from its core beer monitoring business both organically and through strategic acquisitions to widen its offering and develop new businesses, especially in vending telemetry and contactless payment solutions particularly for the premium coffee sector.

Servicing over 300 customers across the world and rendering live data to our IOT platform from over 250,000 connected machines daily, Vianet is one of the largest business to business (b2b) connected solutions providers in Europe with established long-term relationships with blue chip customers and growing recurring revenues which are over 85% of our total revenues.

In our Smart Machines Division, we connect a single data gathering device with its own on-board communication capability to a customer's asset or system.  The device then sends data back via our IOT platform to cloud based servers.  The technology was originally developed for automated retailing machines; however, the flexibility and functionality of the device means the technology can be applied to practically any machine which has the capability to output data.  The device is also used to connect our contactless payment solution and communicate payment terms to our cloud-based payment services providers where that application is also required.

The Smart Zones Division is where we connect multiple data gathering devices into one or more systems or assets with the data from those devices being communicated back to our IOT platform and cloud-based servers via a single 3G communications hub.  The technology was originally developed for flow monitoring devices, temperature sensors, and asset management in drinks retailing but practically any data gathering device with a digital output could be connected to the communications hub where required such as gaming machines, utilities management and EPOS.

For further information, please visit www.vianetplc.com