On August 30th, 2019 Bittnet (BNET) has published the Group’s consolidated half-yearly results. The economic cycle has been favorable to the Group, which registered a 72% increase in revenues compared to the same period of last year, reaching RON 39,8 million turnover. The first half of 2019 has also been positive for the shareholders, as BNET shares have witnessed an increased trading activity and the market capitalization of the company has reached RON 200 million.
Both business lines of the Group have grew in H1 2019 – IT training business line grew by 127%, reaching RON 5 million, while cloud and integration services increased with 66%, up to 35 million lei. From the companies that are part of Bittnet Group, Bittnet’s revenues grew by 40% compared to H1 2018, while Dendrio, the IT&C integrator more than doubled its results, registering turnover of RON 25 million, compared to RON 11 million in H1 2018. Elian maintained the results compared with same period of last year, registering RON 1,3 million, a decrease of 4% compared to H1 2018, while Equatorial registered a strong first half of the year, having grew its revenues 2,5 times, reaching RON 1,5 million.
At the level of EBITDA, Bittnet’s profitability grew with RON 1,5 million, to RON 1,2 million in H1 2019, which reduced the net loss of issuer from over RON 1 million in H1 2018, to RON 70.000 this first half of the year. The management maintains its forecasts and expects that for the full year 2019, consolidated revenues will reach RON 130 million while net profit will be RON 3,5 million lei.
“We are pleased that despite the fact that the first half of 2019 was full of operational challenges, which included moving Crescendo and Elian teams in, expanding office space or integrating Crescendo’s activity into Dendrio, we nonetheless managed to increase by more than 60% the revenues from the Integration & Cloud division. In addition, the business training line recorded a doubling of revenues, based on new portfolio products, which includes DevOps and programming. The overall performance at the group level is in line with our past models and gives us confidence for the second half of the year, which until now in the company’s history, has always been better than the first one”, said Mihai Logofătu, CEO of Bittnet Group.
For the second half of 2019, Bittnet Group plans to introduce a number of new products to the market. In September 2019, Bittnet Training will launch a “learning as a service” platform while Equatorial plans to launch two new games in the fourth quarter of 2019 – Oligopoly, about business acumen, and White Hat, game for IT Specialists.
In terms of capital markets activity, BNET shares have registered an increased activity, with the market capitalization increasing from RON 58 million to approximate RON 200 million as of June 30th, 2019. From the liquidity point of view, BNET shares were again the most traded on the AeRO market, with approximate 15 million BNET shares changing their owners in the specified period, having total value of estimated RON 23,5 million. As a comparison, in H1 2018, the total value of shares traded was RON 3,3 million. The liquidity of all 4 issuances of Bittnet’s corporate bonds, BNET22, BNET23 BNET23A and BNET23C amounted in the first half of 2019 to RON 3,3 million. As of June 30th, 2019, Bittnet Group had more than 1,000 shareholders and over 500 bondholders.
“We followed with pleasure the evolution of the liquidity of our shares and bonds in the first half of 2019. The increased interest of investors, combined with the positive evolution of the stock price, transmits confidence in our future plans. Bill Gates once said that most people overestimate what can be done in a year, but underestimate what can be done in ten years. We believe that the volumes, but also the prices at which our shares were traded, show that we have with us investors who focus on the evolution in ten years’ time, and this is a very good sign”, said Cristian Logofătu, CFO and co-founder Bittnet.
For the second half of the year, the company intends to accelerate the process of carrying out the capital increase operation with new contributions, which was already approved by the General Meeting of Shareholders in a formula that will bring a 25% return to investors, as well as continue the process of migration to the Bucharest Stock Exchange’s Main Market.
The full version of the Bittnet’s half-year financial report as of June 30th, 2019 can be found here (Romanian version available here).