UPDATE: Bango Sees FY11 Revenue Surge, Long-Term Profit

16th Jun 2010 11:01

(Adds executive comment.) By Hannah Benjamin Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES LONDON (Dow Jones)--Mobile web payment services provider Bango PLC (BGO.LN) Wednesday said it expects fiscal 2011 revenue to top GBP50 million as it expands its services and gains more clients, and to remain profitable in the long term. Bango, whose technology enables firms to collect payments for services sold to Internet-connected mobile phone users, expects to grow revenue to GBP51 million this fiscal and to GBP82.6 million in fiscal 2012. The latter figure would see the company's fiscal 2010 sales of GBP26.1 million more than treble. It plans to achieve this revenue growth by providing more payment services to existing customers and signing up new clients. "We want to sign up additional customers and add more payment relationships so existing customers can charge more than before," Chief Executive Ray Anderson told Dow Jones Newswires Wednesday. Bango narrowed its pretax loss to GBP250,000 from a GBP646,000 loss a year earlier and made a maiden fiscal 2010 net profit of GBP10,000, following a profitable second half. "We're on a profitable track and our brokers are forecasting a fiscal 2011 profit of about GBP2 million, which we're comfortable with," Anderson said. A stronger foothold in the U.S. will likely drive sales, while the company also has an opportunity to tap into emerging markets like Brazil and India, where mobile Internet is increasingly being used, he said. "We're seeing a huge amount of traffic from India--just one region where there's a big base of customers starting to get web access on mobile phones but where they're behind with their payment options," Anderson said. In spite of growing markets like this, the bulk of Bango's revenue is expected to continue coming from the U.S., which is the base for many content providers. "We've increased our share of the U.S. mobile content market from about 1% to 5% and we're looking to grow that to a 10% share by the end of next year," Anderson said. A sure-fire way of growing market share would be if iPhone maker Apple Inc. (AAPL) were to open up its application site and sell apps from more developers. "The question is as Apple becomes more mainstream, will consumer demand force it to open up its application site? If so, we stand to benefit greatly," Anderson said. While Bango only has a limited number of apps available through Apple's site--such as its Flirtomatic dating service--Anderson said the good news is that its services are proven to work on the iPhone, opening up the prospect of a significant opportunity to tap into Apple's customer base in the future. -By Hannah Benjamin, Dow Jones Newswires; 44-20-7842-9298; [email protected] (END) Dow Jones Newswires June 16, 2010 06:01 ET (10:01 GMT)