Theme park ticketing specialist Galasys (LON:GLS) posted a 35% increase in pretax profit in its maiden half year results and expects to expand further its market coverage in China and other Asian countries.
The company provides ticket solutions to the rapidlygrowing Asian theme park market and now works with 85 such parks.
Pretax profit came in at 5.02mln Malaysian Ringgit(RM) (£957,816) compared to RM3.72mln (£709,776) in the six months to June 30, 2013.
The comparatives are based on assuming Galasys formerly Green Laser Technology was part of the Galasys Group since the beginning of last year.
Revenue for the first half was 34% higher at RM16.44mln (£3.136mln). The firm has made rapid progress since successfully floating on AIM in May, raising £3.10 million at a placing price of 22.5p.
The firm revealed it had secured new contracts with 25 new amusement parks since floating, including a major ticketing IT outsourcing (TiTo) contract with Wenzhou Water Park, and was awarded its first ever movie theme park ticketing contracts by the Dalian Wanda Group.
Sean Seah, chief executive, told investors: “Our sales pipeline is increasing and we expect further momentum as the group continues to expand its market coverage in China and other Asian countries.
“We expect to maintain growth levels, and to secure more projects as we increase penetration into new markets and continue development and launch of new cloudbased products and services going forward.”
Galasys said plans to introduce different revenue share models were bearing fruit as it has successfully secured more clients at much higher margins in addition to continuing to serving existing clients via upgrades and new product modules.
“Several new key products and services are in the pipeline and the second half of the year will see us completing their development, and then launching them in the market,” it said.
One of the group’s key aims is to align its revenue and profits more directly to the number of visitors, which come to its theme park customers, namely via ticket sales.
One way of doing this, explained Seah to Proactive Investors, will be via the group’s proprietary new Cloudbased platform CLOTA, which stands for Cloud Online Travel Agencies, which is planned to be rolled out in the fourth quarter this year.
Seah notes the firm has already signed up the top five online travel agencies in China Qunar, Ctrip, LY.com, 17U.com and Lvmama and the idea is that all Galasys theme park ticketing system will be connected to the online agencies.
“With this, we will be able to capture revenue share for every ticket which sells to the CLOTA platform,” says Seah, who highlights the tremendous profitability potential of this move.
Today, he said 85 parks were printing 100mln tickets using the group’s system.
“The plan is to grow this to 200 sites over the next two to five years,” he said, highlighting a potential 200mln tickets beingsold. And with a revenue share for Galasys on each ticket sold, the profit potential is obvious.
Galasys shares rose on Monday 5.19% to stand at 20.25p each.
(Source: Proactive Investors.co.uk, 01 September 2014)