engage:BDR implements remote strategy amidst strong revenue growth

Programmatic ad company engage:BDR (ASX: EN1) has published operational guidance for the past few months and says its daily revenue growth has increased by over 19% in the past week while daily revenue has gone up 11% in the past 24 hours.

Performance has improved markedly in the past year to the point of engage:BDR declaring that the company is on track to achieve almost three times its Q1 2019 result for Q1 2020 when comparing year-to-date.

The company said its management team is expecting consistent revenue growth “which will enable a significant revenue increase over 2019”.

engage:BDR also declared that its ad inventory had increased 9% with strong advertiser demand out-pacing inventory growth. The feat was hailed as a “statistic that draws immediate attention to exponentially increased advertiser demand”.

From ads to market

Currently, engage:BDR does not sell programmatic advertising directly to brands or their agencies, but rather, supplies ad inventory to the world’s largest media buyer platforms who are typically licenced by brands and companies.

Overall, engage:BDR is on track to outpace February’s performance by $500,000, an increase of 30%, and maintain consistent monthly revenue growth and EBITDA profit.

In other developments, engage:BDR reported that its business development and account management teams were staying “in very close contact with all clients on a daily basis”, with no reduced spends among clients, no cancelled campaigns or any negative impact so far in 2020, as a result of the coronavirus.

To ensure business continuity and reduce any adverse impact from retrenching consumer spending, the programmatic ad company is predominantly using remote staff that relies on cloud-based systems and remote productivity tools.

As a means of mitigating the impact of widespread coronavirus travel restrictions, engage:BDR said that as of last week, it had deployed an “optional remote working strategy” for all employees and enabled access to all systems via a VPN. The extent of its remote strategy is that as many as 95% of staff are now working from home.

engage:BDR said it expects ad inventory numbers to continue growing, specifically in the two sectors the company is most active: mobile apps and connected television.

Financing the future

In terms of its balance sheet and broader finances, engage:BDR reported that due to significant interest rate reductions and a profitable 2019, it had received term sheets for debt refinancing with management working to refinance the current outstanding convertible notes, and then planning to terminate all convertible instruments.

As things stand, engage:BDR is carrying around $1.4 million in legacy debt but has said it is not focusing on settling its outstanding debts in the near-term.

Instead, the plan is to avoid issuing shares to extinguish its current liabilities although “exceptions to this would be settlement opportunities at significant discounts”, the company said.

Moreover, engage:BDR’s management team led by chief executive officer Ted Dhanik has admitted it is “aggressively” working to refinance the company’s convertible notes facility which will mean the company will cease issuing shares in this method soon.

“Today, we are faced with yet another episode of potential change; we have already discovered massive new opportunities to deliver immeasurable value to our clients and partners. I am confident the world will get through this quickly, but in the interim, we will demonstrate how well we perform in environments like these,” said Mr Dhanik.