29 July 2025

PCI-PAL PLC

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

Trading & Business Update

PCI-PAL PLC (AIM: PCIP), the global cloud provider of secure payment solutions for business communications, is pleased to provide the following update on the trading and outlook for the Company.

Highlights

·      FY25 has seen the Company deliver excellent progress against its key KPIs, with ARR increasing by 25% to £19.3m and both Revenue and Adjusted Profit before Tax in line with market expectations*.

·      The Company has further expanded its market leading partner eco-system as well as broadening existing key partner relationships, maintaining 100% retention of all strategic partners. 

·      FY26 brings an increased focus on further product innovation with product launches anticipated to complement the existing PCI Pal product suite and generate incremental ARR.  This includes the announcement today of the launch of the Company's new AI-powered fraud risk scoring product now available across the PCI Pal platform.

·      A new strategic plan has been put in place as the Company looks to increase near term investment utilising the Company's available cash resources to continue to support long term organic growth rates of ARR in the region of 18-20% through FY27 and beyond. 

·      FY26 revenue expectation range of £23.5m to £24m reflecting timing of new business and current FX rates.

*The Board understands that current market estimates for FY25 are revenues of £22.4m and adj. PBT of £0.8m.

FY25 Trading Update

Another strong year of organic growth for PCI Pal with the Company delivering against its objectives for the year.  The Company expects to report an adjusted profit before tax in line with market expectations along with the following key metrics^* in its FY25 results:

* Subject to final audit

FY25 has seen continued momentum in the operational performance of the business.  In particular we draw attention to the Company's continued ability to expand its partner eco-system and win new integrated reseller partnerships with the world's leading business communications companies, reflecting its position as the leading cloud provider in its space: 

·      As announced on 10 March 2025, the new partnership with RingCentral, won in the year, is now at launch across Europe and North America and has now begun to generate meaningful sales pipeline which has resulted in a number of new customer wins towards the Company's year-end. 

·      In H2, the Company also agreed a new agreement with a billion dollar revenue business communications company who have recently launched their own CCaaS⁵ offering alongside the company's well-established unified communications and meeting's portfolio.  PCI Pal has been selected as the preferred secure payments provider.

FY26 Outlook

The Board currently expects Group revenue for FY26 to be within a range of £23.5m to £24m**.  The Boards current assessment of FY26 revenues is driven by two key factors.  The first being the weakening of the US dollar which has an impact on the Company's reported revenue in pound sterling given the increasing revenues being generated from North America. The second being the timing, mix and size of new business wins and the timeframe to revenue recognition from that new business. 

Overall, new business sales momentum remains strong, and the Board is confident in the Company's growing sales pipeline as a result of strong execution against the Company's core objectives.  Notwithstanding FX considerations, the Company believes that FY26 Group CARR and ARR should be in line with management's expectations.

** The Board understands that current consensus estimates as at 28 July 2025 for FY26 revenue is c.£25.5m.

New Strategic Plan

With the successful completion of proceedings in the patent lawsuit that the Company had with a competitor, as announced in June 2024, and following the appointment of a new CFO in October 2024, the Board has undertaken an extensive review of its rolling three-year plan. The objective of this review was to ensure that the Company can build on its now proven stronger market position and capitalise on the undoubted market opportunity before it.  Today the Board provides the following updates on its revised three-year plan:

·      The Company remains focused on delivering against its growth objectives with an aim to continue building a business driving organic year on year ARR growth in the region of 18%-20% through FY27 and beyond.

·      The Group plans to maximise the opportunity presented by the fast-growing global cloud based contact centre solutions market.  The market is expected to grow by six times with a CAGR of more than 20% for the next eight years to $180 billion⁶ in market value. 

PCI Pal is exceptionally well positioned with deep technology integrations to the majority of the major CCaaS platforms that underpin and facilitate this broad contact centre solutions market.  The Company intends to further deepen its relationships with CCaaS vendors through a combination of broader sales engagement and new product innovation across payments, fraud, identity, and customer experience.

·      To support this long-term growth objective, the Company plans to utilise available cash resources to increase its investment in marketing, product marketing, and engineering to better support the Group's financial plans and continue to increase its sales pipeline.

As part of this plan, since period end, the Company has successfully hired a new Chief Marketing Officer who is US-based with extensive relevant experience. 

·      The Company's continued focus on product innovation will involve the launch of adjacent products commencing in FY26 that will grow its addressable market whilst increasing cross-sell opportunities to existing customers with whom it has exceptionally high retention rates. The first of these, a new AI-powered fraud risk scoring product to help combat payment fraud, was announced earlier today.

The Company intends to spend in the region of £1.5 million on this additional investment with the majority of this coming in FY26.

The Board believes that given the leading market position of the Company, this increased investment will prove impactful.  Pace is a key strategic consideration of the Board in making these plans so that the Company can continue to aggressively build momentum over its competitors. These investments will also allow the Company to fully grasp the growing opportunity in its market to provide solutions to its customers who utilise both human and AI agents across all customer interaction channels.

Commenting on progress, James Barham, Chief Executive Officer of PCI Pal, said:

"FY25 marked another year of strong organic growth for PCI Pal, with ARR up 25% and both Group revenue and profitability in line with expectations. We continued to expand our partner ecosystem, added new high-impact relationships with global vendors like RingCentral, and maintained excellent customer and partner retention - underscoring the strength of our platform and execution.

"While FY26 revenue expectations reflect FX headwinds and the timing and mix of new business through to revenue recognition points, ARR and CARR momentum remain strong, supporting our ambition to deliver sustained ARR growth of 18-20% per year through FY27 and beyond.

"With a refreshed strategic plan, a strengthened leadership team, and the first new product launch in a range of planned product innovations for the periods to come, we remain firmly committed to scaling the business and delivering long-term shareholder value through consistent, high-quality growth."

¹ ARR is the Annual Recurring Revenue of all the deployed contracts

² CARR or Contracted Annual Recurring Revenue is the total annual recurring revenue of all signed contracts, whether invoiced and included in deferred revenue or still to be deployed and/or not yet invoiced.  CARR provides a direct line of sight to future ARR from the Company. The naming of this metric as CARR replaces the Company's historic use of TACV, which had the same definition. 

³NRR is the Net Retention Rate of the contracts that are live on the AWS platform and is calculated using the opening total value of deployed contracts from twelve months ago less the ACV of lost deployed contracts in the last 12 months plus the ACV of upsold deployed contracts signed in the last twelve months all divided by the opening total value of deployed contracts at the start of the 12-month period.

⁴GRR is the Gross Retention Rate (of the contracts that are live on the AWS platform) and is calculated using the ACV of retained, deployed contracts  from twelve months ago divided by the opening total value of deployed contracts at the start of the twelve month period

⁵CCaaS is Contact Centre as a Service, referring to the business communications vendors providing that service.

⁶iMarc Cloud Contact Centre Market Report 2024 - Report & forecast 2024-2033

Video:

Chief Executive of PCI-PAL PLC, James Barham, talks to the Trading & Business Update - https://www.investormeetcompany.com/updates/chief-executive-talks-to-the-trading-business-update/show

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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/