27th Jun, 2008
Pulse Group have IPO’d, valuing them at $18m
Pulse, the Malaysian Asian sample bods, have IPOed (in London on the PLUS market). There’s some interesting info about them..
91m shares of which directors own 59%. Priced at 10p per share, hence a valuation of £9m or $18m
83% of Pulse projects are ad hoc whilst 17% are trackers or regular work.
Pulse mostly do online but they also have an in-house 22 seat VOIP call centre targeting countries where Internet penetration is low (eg Thailand, Vietnam, Middle East) or where respondents are under represented in online panels (senior B2B sample, affluent, elderly etc).
Panel size is 340,000 proprietary panellists from Planet Pulse
Pulse’s growth strategy is to grow and be very profitable (neat strategy!)
Strategic plans involve:
suitable acquisitions, a number of which have already been identified
Panel expansion - Pulse is aiming to significantly increase the size of its proprietary panels organically and by acquisition. The Group will also seek to strengthen its existing panels in certain niche markets, specifically China, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines and the GCC countries in the Middle East. This will be achieved both through organic growth of the panels and by acquisitions.
Triangulation - Whenever business is conducted with a branch or division of a customer with other geographical locations, a conscious effort is made to advise those other locations of the relationship that has been established and to encourage them to also make use of the Group’s services.
Going 247 - existing technology allows senior members of staff to generate project quotations and to devise and launch projects remotely from any geographical location in the world and Pulse plans to use its multiple offices in multiple time zones to go round the clock
Innovation - In the future the Directors intend to launch a white label service offering that would allow certain key market research customers licensed access to Pulse DNA. This would enable them to generate their own project costings and even to launch and manage their own projects.
Pulse intends to appoint an additional suitable UK based non-executive director with public company experience - sharpen your CVs..
Evolve had provided the Company with a convertible loan of £400,000. This Loan has now been converted into 8,888,888 new ordinary shares at a conversion price of 4.5p per share. In addition Evolve has subscribed for 1,000,000 new ordinary shares of 1p each at a placing price of 10p per share. These shares, in aggregate totalling 9,888,888, represent 10.79% of the issued share capital of the Company at Admission. As a consequence of the Loan and of the subscription the Company has raised £ 500,000 of new funding before expenses which will be used to cover listing costs, outstanding costs related to Pulse’s aborted attempt to list on AIM and to grow the panel.
What do Pulse consider the risk factors in this space at the moment?!!
Pulse Group currently derives more revenue from sample only business than full service business which is more susceptible to pricing pressure.
Many of the Pulse Group’s current and potential competitors have longer operating histories, larger databases of panellists, greater brand recognition and significantly greater financial and other resources than the Pulse Group does. As a result, these competitors may be able to undertake more extensive sales and marketing campaigns offering their services, adopt more competitive pricing policies and make more attractive offers to potential employees, strategic partners, panellists and customers than the Pulse Group can. In addition, these competitors and potential competitors may develop technologies that are superior to the Pulse Group’s, or that achieve greater market acceptance or cost savings than its own. If the Pulse Group does not successfully compete with these competitors, it might experience a loss of market share, reduced revenues and/or profitability.
Some of the Pulse Group’s clients or potential clients may decide to provide their own Internet-based market survey and data collection services in-house. Should some or all of these clients decide to build their own Internet-based panels and succeed in so doing, their need for the Pulse Group’s products and services could be reduced or eliminated.
The Pulse Group generally has no contracts of a long-term nature with its clients.
Dependency on panels:It may become difficult recruiting or it may become necessary to increase the value of the incentives offered to panellists or its dependency on partners, which may in turn reduce the Pulse Group’s overall profitability and any perceived advantage over more traditional methods of data collection.
Dependency on technology: Pulse raises concerns around connection reliability and enhanced (or more comprehensive) spam filtering (not that Pulse sends spam). Pulse also mentions they could be vulnerable to security attack which could interrupt or stop operations. Scary but true I suppose.
More storage - Pulse’s expansion strategy requires upgrading of disk capacity as the existing storage infrastructure is expected to be filled within twelve to eighteen months.
Data protection risks: Many countries have implemented legislation which places limitations on the collection, processing, use, re-use and transfer of personal information. As a result, information that the Pulse Group receives may be subject to limitations on re-use, transfer and disclosure and the Pulse Group’s information gathering and disclosure practices may be restricted by such legislation.
Posted by: BlowFly
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