Dotdigital : Trading Update and Notice of Interim Results

dotdigital Group plc

('dotdigital' or the 'Company')

Trading Update and Notice of Interim Results

Strong Strategic Progress

dotdigital Group plc (AIM: DOTD), the leading 'SaaS' provider of an omnichannel marketing automation platform with email at its core, announces a trading update ahead of the Company's Interim Results for the six months ended 31 December 2017 ('H1 2018').

The trading performance reported in this statement is based on unaudited management accounts.

Financial highlights

· Group revenue grew 25% to £18.8m, in line with management expectations (H1 2017: £15.0m);

· Organic revenue grew 17% to £17.5m (H1 2017: £15.0m);

· EBITDA also in line with management expectations;

· Cash balance at 31 December 2017 of £10.5m, reflecting cash outflow of £11.5m for acquisition and funding of Comapi during the period;

· Following approval at the AGM on 19 December 2017, a final dividend of 0.55 pence per ordinary share for the year ended 30 June 2017 will be paid on 31 January 2018 to those shareholders on the register on 12 January 2018.

Operational Highlights

Product innovation

· Completed acquisition of Comapi, significantly advancing our progress toward offering a fully integrated omnichannel marketing platform;

· Launched additional features to support customer GDPR compliance;

· Enhanced functionality released to support ecommerce partners.

Geographic expansion

· International sales represented 25% of total sales, up from 22% in the first half of 2017;

· Core EMEA business continued to grow at double digit rate despite some sales cycle lengthening ahead of the introduction of GDPR in May;

· Revenue from the US region was up approximately 44% to $3.3m, (H1 2017: $2.3m) driven by channel partners and system integrators for Magento and Shopify;

· APAC sales-team expansion and Channel partners drove revenue from the region up approximately 75% to AUS$0.9m, (H1 2017 AUS$0.5m).

Developing strategic partnerships

· dotmailer software bundled into the latest version of the Magento Ecommerce platform launched in November 2017;

· Shopify connector launched in July 2017 and client numbers now growing steadily.

· Sales through strategic partners increased by 35% to £7.2m (H1 2017: £5.4m);

· Big Commerce and Woo Commerce integrations have also been launched during the period.

Notice of 2018 Interim Results

dotdigital Group plc will announce its interim results for the period ending 31 December 2017 on 27 February 2018.

Milan Patel, CEO of dotdigital, commented:

'The last six months have been transformational for dotdigital as we have made good progress with many of our strategic initiatives. Our international offering continues to go from strength to strength and in acquiring Comapi, we have taken a significant step toward creating a fully-fledged, omnichannel marketing automation platform. I am pleased with both the speed of integration of Comapi and the enthusiasm shown by both sets of employees, while revenues delivered since acquisition have exceeded our original expectations.

Elsewhere during the period our strategic partnerships have moved forward as we have strengthened our relationships with Magento, Shopify and Microsoft. These partnerships continue to increase our addressable market in all our regions.

Lastly, as GDPR implementation moves closer, we are increasing our efforts to educate the market through our seminar programme and by highlighting the additional features now available on our platform to help achieve compliance with the expected new regulations that come into force in May 2018.

I look forward to providing more detail of our results and plans at our interims which are due on 27 February.'

This announcement contains inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of EU Regulation 596/2014.

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