Novatti Group (ASX:NOV) FY21 results & outlook

Novatti Group Limited (ASX:NOV) CEO Peter Cook, discusses highlights from FY21, including growth in partners and transactions as the company's technology finds greater adoption and new markets.

Lauren Evans: Hi. This is Lauren Evans for the Finance News Network. Joining me from Novatti Group (ASX:NOV) is CEO Peter Cook. Peter, welcome back, and it's nice to meet you.

Peter Cook: Good afternoon, Lauren.

Lauren Evans: So, Novatti Group is well known to our audience as a local innovator in digital banking and payments. Why is this sector growing so fast and attracting so much interest?

Peter Cook: Lauren, we're seeing that digital transformation is hitting all sectors and in particular financial services. So, for instance, we've seen a new service offering such as Afterpay (ASX:APT) bring buy now pay later to global markets over the last four to five years and now get acquired by Square, and at the same time, we're seeing lots of other services being brought to market, whether they be improving old services or completely new services. COVID has exacerbated and accelerated this shift from cash to cashless payments. And whether it be old instruments such as cheques disappearing or new instruments such as digital assets, we're seeing massive innovation and massive uptake of digital financial services.

Lauren Evans: Thanks, Peter. So, now to your FY21 results, what were the highlights, starting with financials?

Peter Cook: So, Novatti delivered its strongest ever revenue results. We were once again up about 50 per cent in revenue. Total revenue was about $18.4 million, and sales revenue about $16.5 million. Both those metrics up about 50 per cent, and then within our total sales revenue, we had our processing revenue was up a bit over 70 per cent. So, essentially the work we've been doing that we've been bringing to market is bearing fruit. We're looking forward to similar growth factors this year, and really, actually, if you look at the last four years, we've grown at plus or minus 45 per cent per annum year on year, and the company really has a good cadence and focus on this growth.

Lauren Evans: And could you provide a comment on the operations and strategy?

Peter Cook: So, operations and strategy is really… Notwithstanding this extreme focus on maintaining that cadence of 50 per cent or so top-line growth, we've really got a focus on building out our ecosystem, from which we can then monetise services, in a very difficult market of increasing our staff and management and also increasing our commercial partnerships and licences. So, in the last year we got a major deal done with Ripple, we got licensed in New Zealand, the Afterpay deal in New Zealand. So, we were able to bring through a lot of new opportunities and at the same time extend our ecosystem and, of course, translate that into top-line growth.

Lauren Evans: And Peter, what's the outlook like for Novatti in FY22?

Peter Cook: From our point of view, very positive. We want to maintain that cadence of 50 per cent if we can, increase it in growth. We're looking at M&A opportunities. We have the 19.9 per cent stake in Reckon, and we want to work closely with Reckon on bringing payments services to some of their customers. In terms of extending our ecosystem, increasing our staffing and management, a lot of work there, but we think we're really well positioned to do it. And I guess, my commitments to the investors and shareholders is please come back in a year's time and hopefully we'll hit that top-line growth again. We're really bringing through a very strong financial company.

Lauren Evans: To the last question from me, Peter, is there anything else that you'd like to add today?

Peter Cook: To our investors, as I said, please follow us. We're driving at a strategy level for the top-line growth. We're working on our acquiring licences with Visa and MasterCard, working on our bank licence, licences overseas, extending our ecosystem, new commercial partnerships, growth and revenues. Thank you very much.

Lauren Evans: Well, Peter Cook, congratulations on a productive financial year, and we look forward to hearing from you later again this year.

Peter Cook: Thanks Lauren and Fin News Network.

Source: Finance News Network