TRADING UPDATE - FINANCIAL YEAR 2016

London, England and San Francisco, CA. - 5 April 2016 - blinkx plc ('blinkx' or the 'Company'), today updates the market on its performance for financial year ended 31 March 2016 ('FY2016' or the 'Period'). This statement is based on unaudited, pre-close figures that may be subject to change.

Financial Update

Performance for FY2016 is expected to be as follows:

  • FY2016 revenues of $165-170M
  • FY2016 Adj. EBITDA loss of ($10-11M)
  • Cash and cash equivalents of $76M

During the Period, the Company generated over $75M in new revenue, and achieved profitability in the third Quarter, followed by anticipated fourth Quarter seasonality. Simultaneously, the Company accelerated its planned drawdown of Non-Core product lines, which now constitute approximately 30% of total revenues - compared with over 50% in FY2015. Programmatic revenues grew 66%, with programmatic and video now constituting over 50% of total revenues, across desktop and mobile devices.

Cost Control

The Company took critical steps during the year, to optimize the Group's cost structure and better align with changing Industry conditions, revenue mix and profitability profile. This included rationalizing the product portfolio, consolidating multiple technology platforms, exiting certain office locations, reducing headcount, integrating functions and building out a highly scalable hybrid cloud infrastructure. As a result, the Company eliminated over $40 Million in annualized operating expenses, incurring approximately $4 Million in restructuring costs.

Re-branding

The Company also undertook a major effort to re-brand its offerings under the RhythmOne brand and launched RhythmMax, its unique and unified programmatic trading platform. RhythmMax includes proprietary brand safety technology, RhythmGuard, which uniformly screens and eliminates underperforming traffic in real time and provides a singular platform to access cross-device RhythmOne inventory across Owned, Controlled and Extended supply sources. The Company now boasts one of the largest supply footprints in the Industry, ranking #6 US platform by ComScore and #11 global platform by Quantcast, as at 31 March 2016.

Market Outlook

As anticipated at the beginning of the Period, FY2016 was a year of integration and investment, against a rapidly evolving Industry backdrop. During the Period, the Company built a strong foundation for future growth and deliberately shifted its focus to Core mobile, video and programmatic trading, the fastest growing segments of the Industry.

Commenting on the FY2016 results S. Brian Mukherjee, CEO of blinkx said, 'FY2016 has been a
transformational year for the Industry and the Company. We believe that we now have the technology, talent and relationships in place to scale both organic and inorganic growth as the Industry continues to evolve and consolidate. Through strong cost discipline and a strategic focus on Core mobile, video and programmatic products we are now well aligned with broader structural market trends.'

The Company will hold its Financial Year 2016 Earnings Conference Call on Tuesday, 17 May 2016. The Company also announces that it will hold its Annual General Meeting for Financial Year 2016 on Thursday, 16 June 2016, in London. blinkx will provide details on each of these events in due course.

Non-GAAP Measures

  • This press release contains references to adjusted* EBITDA. This financial measure is not a measure that has any standardized meaning prescribed by IFRS and is therefore referred to as a non-GAAP measure. The non-GAAP measures used by blinkx may not be comparable to similar measures used by other companies.
  • Adjusted* EBITDA is defined as profit for the year attributable to equity holders of the parent before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, stock based compensation expense, and acquisition and exceptional costs. Management believes that this measure is a useful supplemental metric as it provides an indication of the results generated by the Company's principal business activities prior to consideration of how the results are impacted by one time exceptional charges, how the results are taxed in various jurisdictions, or how the results are affected by the accounting standards associated with the Group's stock based compensation plan.

About blinkx

blinkx (LSE AIM: BLNX) is an Internet media company that connects consumers and brands through premium content online. Founded in 2004 in the UK, blinkx pioneered Internet Video Search using speech recognition, text and image analysis to deeply understand the meaning and context of video content to generate improved search relevancy for consumers and a brand safe environment for advertisers. Through the RhythmOne trade entity, the Company works with advertisers, publishers and content providers to offer fully integrated, cross-screen advertising solutions, spanning desktop and mobile video, rich media, display and native formats. The long-term vision for RhythmOne is to democratize consumer access to digital content globally and, in doing so, create a thriving ecosystem that is respectful of consumer choice, impactful for advertisers, sustainable for content owners and efficient at scale. blinkx is headquartered in San Francisco, California. For more information please visit www.blnx.com.

Press Contacts for blinkx

Analyst and Investor Contact
Dan Slivjanovski
blinkx plc

Financial Media Contacts
Edward Bridges/Charles Palmer
FTI Consulting LLP
(UK) 020 3727 1000

NOMAD and Joint Broker for blinkx plc
Christopher Wren
Citigroup Global Markets Limited
(UK) 020 7986 9756

Joint Broker for blinkx plc
Lorna Tilbian/Mark Lander/Nick Westlake
Numis Securities Limited
(UK) 020 7260 1000

Blinkx plc issued this content on 05 April 2016 and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed by Public, unedited and unaltered, on 05 April 2016 13:44:15 UTC

Original Document: http://www.blnx.com/newsroom/2016/04/05/trading-update-financial-year-2016