31 January 2022

Tribal Group plc

("Tribal" or "the Group") 

Trading Update and Notice of Results

Cloud expansion driving growth in ARR

Tribal (AIM: TRB, "Group", "Company"), a leading provider of software and services to the international education market, is pleased to provide an update on trading for the year ended 31 December 2021 ("the Year").

Strong trading performance

Following a good performance, the Board anticipates FY21 results to be in line with market expectations.

As a result of momentum in new business sales throughout the year, the successful migration of key customers to the Tribal:Cloud, and the acquisition of Semestry in April 2021, the Group exited the Year with record levels of Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR), up 7% to £50.3m (2020: £47.0m at constant currency).  

This positive performance bears out the Board's confidence in the Cloud strategy and product investment programme, to transition to become a SaaS business, with global reach.

The Group's balance sheet remains robust with net cash of £5.9m at Year end (2020: £9.5m) after the net payment of £6.4m on acquisitions and deferred consideration payments and £2.5m in payment of dividends.

Positive sales momentum   

The Group secured multiple new customer wins throughout the year, including two new SITS:Vision customers and three major Tribal:Cloud migrations. The Group has also signed up four early adopters to its newly developed Cloud-based Tribal Edge Admissions module.

In December, the Group concluded contract renewal discussions with its Australian university customers on the Callista Software platform. Of the 11 universities, nine have elected to renew. The five-year agreements provide an evolutionary path towards the Tribal Edge, Cloud delivered SaaS ecosystem. While this represents an overall drop in Callista ARR contribution in comparison to 2021, these multiyear renewals provide a strong foundation of long-term visible revenue, with £5.8m ARR, in the Australian market.

The Education Services division trading performance continued to improve throughout the year, despite the impact of the ongoing pandemic. The team maintained the key assurance, training and inspections contracts in the UK, US and New Zealand largely remotely.

Good Semestry performance

The successful acquisition of Semestry in April 2021 has expanded the Company's Edge family of products, and increased its addressable market, taking it into new geographies. Since acquisition, Semestry has secured nine new customers, growing Semestry ARR by over 30% to £1.2m, representing an acceleration of its historic growth rate. 

Tribal remains selective in its approach to acquisition opportunities, seeking to acquire businesses that add appropriate cloud-based solutions to its Edge family or provide entry into new geographical regions.  

Notice of Results

The Group expects to announce its audited full year results on 17 March 2022.

Outlook

2021 was a year of significant progress against Tribal's goal of becoming a SaaS business, providing technology to empower the world of education. The Company has secured a high level of new customer wins and increased share of wallet for existing customers.

Tribal continues to invest in its people and operations to deliver on its growing customer footprint, evolving its operating model to ensure scalability as it transitions to a platform business, preparing for long-term growth.

With good progress being achieved across the business, the Board is committed to achieving continued strategic and operational progress and capitalising on its opportunity, across its key markets.

Mark Pickett, CEO of Tribal Group, commented:

"The Group has delivered strong strategic progress throughout the year, driven by our market leading products and services which generated deals with new customers, in addition to the adoption by some of our largest customers of the Tribal:Cloud and the initial small sales of our first native cloud module, Tribal Admissions. These early successes can be seen in the steady growth of our annually recurring revenue and provide us with the confidence to continue investing in our transition to a global EdTech SaaS business.

"The growth of our recurring revenue and sales pipeline provides Tribal with a strong platform as we enter the new year, giving us confidence in achieving our long-term financial goals."  

About Tribal Group plc

Tribal Group plc is a pioneering world-leader of education software and services. Its portfolio includes Student Information Systems; a broad range of education services covering quality assurance, peer review, benchmarking and improvement; and student surveys that provide the leading global benchmarks for student experience. Working with Higher Education, Further and Tertiary Education, schools, Government and State bodies, training providers and employers, in over 55 countries; Tribal Group's mission is to empower the world of education with products and services that underpin student success.

This Statement has been prepared for and is addressed only to our shareholders as a whole and should not be relied on by any other party or for any other purpose.  Tribal, its directors, employees, agents or advisers do not accept or assume responsibility to any other person to whom this Statement is shown or into whose hands it may come and any such responsibility or liability is expressly disclaimed.  This Statement may contain forward-looking statements.  Any forward-looking statement has been made by the directors in good faith based on the information available to them up to the time of approval of this Statement and should be treated with caution due to the inherent uncertainties, including both economic and business risk factors, underlying such forward-looking information.  To the extent that this Statement contains any statement dealing with any time after the date of its preparation, such statement is merely predictive and speculative as it relates to events and circumstances which are yet to occur and therefore the facts stated and views expressed may change.  Tribal undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements.