Peppermint Innovation to accelerate AI expansion after reporting stellar results

Australian fintech Peppermint Innovation (ASX: PIL) has kicked off 2024 on a strong footing, announcing an impressive 360% increase in overall revenues for the March quarter.

With major operations in the Philippines and a growing business strategy, Peppermint obtained total cash receipts of $317,000 for the period and also made breakthroughs in product expansion.

“The March ’24 quarter has delivered strong results for Peppermint with new and renewed contract wins for our artificial intelligence (AI) and customer experience (CX) business division, new technology contracts with our strategic co-op partners MASS-SPECC and CHMF, strategic planning around the rollout of MASS-SPECC’s Pinoy Coop App to all 340+ co-operatives, a 20% increase in bizmoLoan revenue quarter-on-quarter and a 360% increase in overall revenues quarter-on-quarter,” managing director and chief executive officer Chris Kain said.

“Our strategic acquisition of PINT […] has allowed Peppermint to leapfrog years of development in building similar AI and CX capabilities, methodologies, frameworks and outputs from scratch to sharply focus on the company’s business going forward.”

PINT success

PINT secured several new contracts during the quarter along with contract extensions for various AI & CX projects, bringing to more than $545,000 the total amount brought in since being acquired for around $2m in December 2023.

“PINT is forecasting a sales pipeline of approximately $1m as it looks to harness AI technologies to enhance services for both new and existing clients,” Mr Kain said.

“We are also integrating PINT’s AI & CX teams into our existing technology operations, allowing us to enhance our technological delivery capabilities and deliver cost optimisation and specialisation across our operations teams, thereby ensuring a more efficient overall structure.”

“This strategy has already allowed us to accelerate our AI transformation across our bizmoLoan origination, scoring, management and collections to deliver improved customer and financial outcomes.”

Clear roadmap

Mr Kain added that Peppermint has identified AI as the single most important technology mega-trend of this generation and the company has a clear roadmap in place to become the most advanced AI-powered lender in the Philippines.

“Our strategic partnerships with MASS-SPECC and CHMF continue to deliver positive outcomes for Peppermint Bizmoto in the Philippines, with the company signing three new technology development contracts worth more than $53,000 during the March 2024 quarter,” Mr Kain said.

“It is pleasing to see that our co-op partners are continuing to invest in technology to assist the digital transformation of their respective membership bases and provide easier access to Peppermint Bizmoto’s electronic money issuer wallet services.”

Pinoy Coop app

Peppermint continues to work closely with MASS-SPECC’s Pinoy Coop app delivery team in planning for the full-scale roll-out of the app to more than 340 million individual members.

The two companies have started discussions regarding the next line of features for the app, aimed at further enhancing the user experience and improving functionality for provide key services such as remittance.

From a corporate perspective, Peppermint successfully raised more than $1.1m in a new share placement to sophisticated and professional investors.

The company also appointed a new chief financial officer and commenced an organisational restructure and cost reduction program.