Vianet, the beerflow monitoring company formerly known as Brulines, reported revenue of £18.35m, down from £21m, and pre-tax profit of £1.56m across its portfolio of vending monitoring equipment for the year to 31 March 2014.
In its full year results, the company reported its leisure sector, which includes beer monitoring, generated “robust” revenue of £12.4m, down from £14.45m in 2012/13 and gross profit of £8.67m.
Vianet said its profit, which was down from £1.8m the previous year, had been: “impacted by £0.71 million of exceptional costs incurred in responding to the Government’s proposed statutory code for pub companies, the cost base reduction programme, and further rationalisation of the group structure.”
The company installed 416 new beer monitoring systems over the year, of which 296 were of its iDraught technology, these collectively with product mix and efficiencies have improved leisure margins by 15%.
Several major customer contract extensions both in the Group’s beer monitoring and vending sectors including Enterprise Inns, Heineken, Charles Wells and Daniel Thwaite, contributed to contractual and recurring revenues remaining at over 70% of Group revenue.
James Dickson, chairman of Vianet Group plc, said: “I am pleased to report that good progress has been made across the Group’s businesses, and by focussing resources on the growth opportunities that we have been developing over the last few years, the positive momentum has helped offset the detrimental effect of the proposed Statutory Code.
“The uncertainty of the past several years is about to be lifted as the Government last week published a balanced response to the Pub Company consultation, although we suspect that its implementation will remain a customer distraction for some time. However, the Group is confident that the on-going high growth Vending opportunities, higher margin activity, and further efficiencies provide an encouraging outlook for 2015. The Group’s markets, products, customers and people are now in place to deliver earnings growth and there is a solid foundation for future profitability,” Dickson said.
“In essence, the Government plans to legislate to put the existing voluntary code onto a statutory footing which, for beer flow monitoring, is a continuance of our existing operating procedures. The Board is pleased that the uncertainty of the past several years is now being lifted and considers this a satisfactory outcome although we suspect that the legislative implementation of the wider Statutory Code may remain a distraction for our customers for a period of time yet.
“Although this uncertainty and further pub closures remained a detrimental factor on financial performance during FY 2014, the Board is confident that the ongoing focus on developing the Vending division, together with change programs in our beer flow monitoring and fuel businesses, are now proving beneficial and provide an encouraging outlook for 2015,” Dickson added.
In its plans for growth, the company outlined developing the next generation of beer monitoring technology for the wider licensed trade.
