Continued strong underlying growth and performance

StrongPoint continued to deliver a strong underlying growth and performance in the 2nd quarter 2019. The group achieved a 19 % underlying revenue growth, adjusted for the sale of the Cash Management as a Service contract to Alimerka last year. The corresponding EBITDA improvement was MNOK 25.

StrongPoint achieved a revenue of MNOK 287.1 in the quarter and the growth stemmed from the business areas Retail Technologies and Cash Security. EBITDA landed on MNOK 22.1 and was in addition affected by improved margins and earlier announced MNOK 30 p.a. cost reduction initiatives. StrongPoint’s rental solutions, both for products and software, was positively received by the market.

In the 2nd quarter StrongPoint delivered the first Click & Collect order to an ICA store in Sweden. There has also been installed pilots to Coop Sweden and to a supermarket chain and a logistics company in Spain. These customers see the benefit of StrongPoint’s Click & Collect solution and the pilots will be used to evaluate if this solution will be a part of their future delivery concept. The high sales of Vensafe sales automation solutions continued this quarter. The orders are a result of the successful replacement campaign for Vensafe last year in Norway and Sweden. StrongPoint has also delivered the first Pricer Electronic Shelf Label to Rimi Baltic and Self-Checkout solutions to ”top!” and Mego, retailers in the Baltic region. In addition, Easy Access, which enables customers to rent Cash Management systems through StrongPoint, is rapidly growing in Spain. There was installed more than 70 systems in Q2, three times as many installations compared to Q1.

During the quarter StrongPoint announced two new exciting partnerships: One with Reflexis and their US-based workforce and taskforce management software tool. It provides StrongPoint the opportunity to sell and install the Reflexis solution to customers in the Nordics and the Baltic countries. Secondly there were announced a partnership with Optical Phusion (OPI), granting OPI the rights to sell StrongPoint’s current
E-commerce Logistics Suite to customers in North America. StrongPoint continues to invest in e-commerce, where considerable resources are being put into “productification” of their E-commerce Logistics Suite. The project, called E20, will continue through 2020.

– Going forward, we will focus on strengthening our Retail Technology business. This means maintaining and strengthening our relevance in Norway, Sweden and the Baltics. Furthermore, we will invest to increase our presence in Spain and Germany. Finally, we will continue to grow our E-commerce business into a significant part of StrongPoint’s business. In this context, we will continue to explore both partnerships and M&A opportunities in the future where mutual benefit and interests are aligned. Beyond that, we will do our outmost to be the best owner and employer for all business under the StrongPoint umbrella, says Jacob Tveraabak, CEO of Strongpoint.

Download the report here.
See a recorded interview with CEO Jacob Tveraabak here.

For further information:
Hilde Horn Gilen
CFO
Tel: +47 920 60 158
E-mail: hilde.gilen@strongpoint.com