PCI-PAL PLC

("PCI Pal", "the Company" or "the Group")

Further Detail on High Court Patent Case Outcome and Trading Update

PCI-PAL PLC (AIM: PCIP), the global cloud provider of secure payment solutions for business communications, is pleased to provide an update following the successful defence in the UK High Court of the unfounded patent claims being made against it.

Victory in UK High Court Patent Proceedings

Following the Company's announcement on 25 September 2023 that it had comprehensively defeated the unfounded patent infringement claims being brought against it by its competitor, Sycurio Limited, the Company advises investors that the ruling from Mrs Justice Bacon is now available at https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ewhc/pat/2023/2361.  The detail of the written ruling was resoundingly in PCI Pal's favour.

The Company understands that a Form of Order hearing will be heard in December, where a number of administrative and outstanding matters will be resolved by the Judge.  Given the extent of PCI Pal's victory, the Company will be seeking the maximum recovery of costs.  We will provide a further update once the Form of Order hearing has completed.

Appeals in patent cases are common, no matter the nature of the ruling, and therefore PCI Pal is ready for an appeal should it be filed.  Given how comprehensive the ruling was in PCI Pal's favour, we remain confident in the High Court Judge's judgement that Sycurio's patent is invalid due to prior art and that, even if the patent were valid, our solutions would not infringe.

PCI Pal Intellectual Property

As the first mover in our market to a public cloud solution we continue to protect our innovative ideas by securing patents for our technology (https://www.pcipal.com/technology/patented-and-protected/).  These patents include protection for our key deployment models of our Agent Assist solution, and provide coverage across the key international regions we operate in today. We will defend our IP fully in the event we are aware of third parties copying our novel and innovative methods. 

Current Trading Update

FY23 was a further positive year for the Group and we delivered on key expectations even against global macro-economic headwinds.  The business has continued its good momentum into FY24 signing 57 new contracts.  The Group has a healthy near term sales pipeline which includes numerous opportunities exceeding $100k ACV in value at a mature stage of sales progression.  Additionally, we continue to grow our partner eco-system, which has included the signing of a major new reseller, one of the largest Business Process Outsourcers ("BPOs") in the United States.

Further, as anticipated, we are beginning to launch an array of new products and features.  This has included the launch of our AI-powered, enhanced Automatic Speech Recognition ("ASR") feature for our Agent Assist and IVR products.  There are also a number of POCs in progress with partners for our new user interface and digital payment capabilities that we have already announced would be launched fully later this year.

In FY23 we achieved revenue growth of 25%.  Based on the trading year to date we now expect to see revenue growth in FY24 of between 28-30%.  This is expected to allow the business to report the Company's first full year of adjusted pre-tax profit.

Timetable for results to 30 June 2023

The Company's annual accounts were delayed as a result of the proximity to the UK High Court's ruling in the patent case. The Company is now finalising the timetable for the completion of the annual audit for the 12 months to 30 June 2023 and is expecting to release its results in late October or early November. As soon as a date is finalised it will be announced to the market. 

Commenting, James Barham, Chief Executive Officer, said:

"After two years of disputing this unfounded and unwarranted action brought by a competitor in an attempt to disrupt our business, we are delighted by the ruling received from the UK High Court validating our position. 

"We believe that Sycurio might choose to appeal the ruling. The comprehensive nature of the judgement that both invalidated their patent due to obviousness of prior art, and confirming that our solutions do not infringe anyway, means that we remain very confident in our position if an appeal is lodged. The Board believes that the judgement supports the strength of PCI Pal's position and makes, in its opinion, any appeal unlikely to impact PCI-Pal's market position or the growth being seen in the business.

"The case has no doubt been a distraction to management of the Company but the momentum we have continued to build over the last two years is testament to the execution against our stated plans, the strength of our people and the ingenuity of our modern, cloud-based solutions.  We have top quartile customer and employee retention rates, a strong and robust channel partner and cloud based strategy and we have the fastest growth rates of any established company in our space. Further, we have an exciting sales pipeline in front of us, and are looking forward to achieving key financial and product milestones this year."

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About PCI Pal:

PCI Pal is a leading provider of Software-as-a-Service ("SaaS") solutions that empower companies to take payments from their customers securely, adhere to strict industry governance, and remove their business from the significant risks posed by non-compliance and data loss. Our products secure payments and data in any business communications environment including voice, chat, social, email, and contact centre. We are integrated to, and resold by, some of the worlds' leading business communications vendors, as well as major payment service providers.

The entirety of our product-base is available from our global cloud platform hosted in Amazon Web Services ("AWS"), with regional instances across EMEA, North America, and ANZ.

For more information visit www.pcipal.com or follow the team on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pci-pal/