Blur Group Share Discussion Threads

[owenga] 23/5/2014 08:04

See where these settle today. I have been watching this company for a while. Looking to buy soon. Looks like this is a good opportunity. Should see a price floor soon!

[wisteria2] 23/5/2014 08:01

Well if this drops to 75p then I might jump back in .... but there's no rush.. gla

[j777j] 23/5/2014 07:45

From the results statement.....







Chairman and Chief Executive's Report



Overview

blur Group has grown in every dimension during 2013, taking further our stated intent to disrupt the traditional way in which businesses buy and sell services. Replacing the traditional services exchange model with a better, more effective and higher value way that hugely benefits both buyer and provider, acting against the interests of entrenched, tired relationships.



A big step taken during 2013 was to make our offer attractive and usable to every size of business from small to enterprise, resulting in a significant increase in average brief value. Our growth tells us that our addressable market appears to have few bounds and we believe we have only put our toe into the water of this new way of buying and supplying services.



We continue to develop as a business, making continual investments in our technology platform and our teams. I am pleased to say that we now have an amazing group of people driving the business, all bound by a culture that takes as its mission to positively change the face of services-commerce, forever.



Financial Growth, Fundraising & Key Metrics

Our results over the year were encouraging with strong growth in our revenue line.



The total bookings intake* for 2013 increased by $19.8m to $22.2m (2012:$2.4m) and of this $4.8m was recognized as revenue in the year (2012:$2.8m) and $17.4m (2012:$0.3m) will be recognized as revenue in the future if and when delivery of the services booked in 2013 have completed.



The number of briefs submitted to the platform rose in 2013 to 2,086 from 776 in 2012 (169% growth) with an average brief value rising to $37,969 from $12,738. Briefs are available to our expert community to pitch for, and in the event they lead to a successful project, they then become revenue generating for the Group. Significantly, we converted 579 (140% growth) briefs into live projects.



The demand for large projects submitted through blur Group's Exchange led to us increasing our project ceiling to $5 million during the year, having started in Q1 2013 at just $1million. The agility of our business allows us to adapt to market demands and facilitate use of the Exchange for changing market opportunities.



There were around 1,012 new business users (customers and experts) adopting the Exchange each month in 2013. The size of the projects is growing and we are seeing increasingly larger projects coming on to the Exchange. Some of the new customers using the Exchange for the first time in 2013 included Danone, Regus, Octopus Investments, Cuchura, The Red Flag Group, Randall & Aubin, Mobil2 and Benicomp, showing the global reach and applicability of the Exchange for any size of business, and any size of project.



In order to facilitate our growth, we successfully raised $11.97 million (£7.62 million) before expenses in June 2013 and I would like to thank both the existing and new institutions and individual investors that took part in the Placing. This funding enabled us to accelerate our growth on a global basis and across all areas of service-commerce.



We continue to invest in our growth and expect this to continue through 2014.



*The total bookings intake represents the project values (excluding listing fees) as agreed and confirmed by the customer in the year. It is used to measure the total expected revenue to be recognized over the life cycle of these projects and can include a proportion that is contingent, with revenues being recognized in the current and future periods, either over timelines or upon milestones being achieved. This booking value may change over time due to the scale, contingent elements and complexity of projects.







Technology & Infrastructure Growth

We are, at heart, a technology business. The year under review saw the launch of blur 3.0 which, at the time, was the most significant advance that we had made, adding multi-device management, increased speed, scalability, improved user experience, along with integrated and intuitive management to our cloud-based platform. blur 3.0 enabled us to add further capability through the year, including 'blur Sense', an intelligent recommendation engine to automate part of the selection process; along with more advanced project management and integrated billing.

In the latter part of 2013, the technology team were developing the next version of trading platform blur 4.0 which is being rolled out in the first half of 2014.



We also made investments in supporting the long-term growth of the business in terms of capacity, culture and talent, ensuring we have the scalability and the right environment to take advantage of what is clearly a massive business growth opportunity. In November, we completed the move of our global headquarters to a newly-built science park in Exeter in the South West of England. The move creates a campus that allows us to expand easily and at low cost plus we now have an environment that lends itself to creative development. Indeed, while there are four excellent universities nearby to provide future technology and thought leaders, one of the more surprising aspects of our move has been how easy it has been to attract highly gifted individuals from other organizations and walks of life to join us and re-locate to the South West. During 2013 we also opened our second office in the US in Southern California, the fourth in total.



blur Group has continued to invest to ensure that we have the very best in the marketplace and the right people in the right positions to provide an optimal framework to support the business as it continues its rapid growth. As well as attracting new people to blur Group, it has been particularly rewarding to promote from within, recognizing the achievements and hard work of those who have already achieved so much with blur. Included within this is Jon Hogg who has been promoted to Chief Platform Officer and Dorothy Mead who has risen to Chief Acquisition Officer. The total number of employees at the year-end was 74, up from 40 at the end of the prior year.



Growth of the corporate sales teams

Throughout 2013 more businesses became exchange adopters: using services-commerce in different functions and categories across their organizations. As blur Group's business grows customer experience warrants even greater focus and so a newly created position; Chief Community Officer was created. In this role Kara Cardinale has developed two key divisions: Customer Success, with the goal to enhance customer service and experience, and Projects & Payments which handles the project delivery process from kick-off to completion.



To support the rapidly growing scale of the business globally, blur Group has strengthened its operational team across all regions. Gerry Gross was promoted to Chief Commercial Officer with a remit to drive growth of enterprise-class customers from regional sales offices in London, Dallas and the west coast of US.



Corporate customers are more likely to provide a greater flow of repeat business on a more frequent basis than smaller companies. The corporate sales team has therefore been expanded both in EMEA and the US and has already made significant strides including the largest project ever brought through the Global Services Exchange, so far. As part of its expanding partner program blur has partnered with Alibaba to promote blur to its business customers and grow into the Asia Pacific region.



Our Strategy & Business Model

This year we conducted research to determine the level of inertia in services buying. We found that while 89% of decision makers believed better service providers were available outside their existing network, the same number were still likely to approach their existing service providers when a new project arose. 93% of decision makers said that while they would like to find a new service partner, the majority of these (83%) felt that their procurement processes prevented them from being able to enjoy the potential benefits this would bring.



Our strategy and business directly addresses the needs of these services buyers. We have built a services-commerce platform that enables projects to be briefed, sourced, delivered and paid for from providers around the world without recourse to traditional Request for Proposals, lengthy selection processes and the inability to switch provider for ad-hoc projects. Our Exchange allows both buyers and sellers to join blur and deliver projects with blur's management expertise in a services-commerce environment, driving services buying for business much like the way e-commerce has changed the way consumers source and buy.



Our ambition is to change the services buying market for business of all sizes, much like the major players have done in the consumer market. We believe that we have made the right steps to do this and have a true first mover advantage. We invest in customer acquisition channels such as pay-per-click, search engine optimization, content marketing and automation, 3rd party networks, social media and have built a corporate sales force to target medium and large businesses. As part of our drive to stay ahead of business opportunities, we monitor returns from each of these activities closely and have clear metrics so that we understand what works, what does not and what cost in this emerging market.



Future Plans

Our goal in 2014 is to firmly establish blur Group in the Enterprise, delivering consistently on a higher volume of projects. We will continue to attract and deliver for the small business at scale and increasingly cost effectively. Developments in our technology platform, embedded in our blur 4.0 launch, will deliver true enterprise levels of scalability and automation. We believe this move will provide organizations with the confidence to use what we call 's-commerce' to source every aspect of the long-tail of their services procurement.



While we are all about technology, we are also completely dependent on continuing to attract and retain the brightest talent at all levels across all teams and all regions, and it is this high performing team, 74 at the end of 2013, that will drive blur Group's next and vital phase of growth. As part of this growth the Group is committed to the hiring of a new non-executive Chairman so to have the pillars in place to support the growth plans and also a Chief Financial Officer to further strengthen the team and take the business to the next stage of development and beyond. With our HQ move now complete, and expansion into new regions beginning, we are well on our way to fulfilling our ambition to be a global technology success story from our UK base.



This growth will be supported by a proposed capital fundraising to raise approximately $20 million (£11.9 million) by way of a placing and up to $2 million (£1.2 million) through an open offer, which will strengthen the balance sheet as larger enterprises make use of the Exchange and take the business through to profitability.



We made good progress in 2013, but I strongly believe that we have only scratched the surface. We are confident that we are at the cusp of major growth as the benefits of s-commerce are experienced and understood by our markets.



I look forward with confidence into 2014 and beyond.



Philip Letts

Chairman & CEO

[garth] 23/5/2014 07:38

Orange,

If there really was a suggestion of such strong institutional interest that Letts was persuaded not to buy then,
A. The price should have been higher
B. Letts should buy in the open market.

G.

[j777j] 23/5/2014 07:21

More dilution than I was expecting,but they have raised more than I was expecting,up to £13.1 million before expenses and that sets them on much firmer ground.It give the co the firepower needed to further consolidate it's first mover advantage.

It also means they have brought in new institutional shareholders.

Looking to bolster the board with new CFO and independent non exec chairman and the outlook from the results includes new sales teams for the far east.




That dilution would bring Numis's price target to 378p from 600p.

Also it means the inevitable fund raising is now done and dusted,hopefully through to profitability.


I see this as a take two of the original IPO.The difference being the company now has $252 million worth of projects listed.


The pre emption rights for exisiting share holders 3 share for every 56 seems mean,but of course we are free to buy on the open market.


Reset and reload.

[orange1] 23/5/2014 07:20

I think Letts wanted to buy shares but because of strong institutional interest he was persuaded not to.

On second thoughts ....

[stegrego] 23/5/2014 07:07

J7,

When you said yesterday that you had been told the placing price was wrong, I was going to post that it is probably lower than 90p, but didn't.

And how many shares has Letts bought? Probably none as I don't see it mentioned.

[bigbigdave] 23/5/2014 07:05

"Pleased" to announce placing at 75p?
Bit of a contradiction!

[j777j] 22/5/2014 20:35

You really should not speak about your other half like that.

Next you will have your future king telling Putin he is like Adolf.

Hmm maybe he has a point.

[eric76] 22/5/2014 20:17

Yep you've got our no. there J.
Just about the only thing we've got to be proud of nowadays in the Uk is.. ..At least we're not Americans!!
ATB taking the dog for a walk..

[oldtown] 22/5/2014 19:14

Get the bin bag ready.

[hazl] 22/5/2014 19:07

I think those that give j777j a hard time should rethink. He's picked a share that did him proud for a while.I read a while ago that small caps would be hit hard towards the end of the year and its just started earlier than that and with the companies that were considered high growth.
Its not company specific imo

[sanks] 22/5/2014 18:24

Too many nobs on here now, spouting rampings upon ramplings...i@ll wait now, cos when the nipple hits the fan, the nipple will burst.

Hope that makes some sense
Sanks

[milesoffshore] 22/5/2014 16:58

That is an impressive 1yr chart! The problem is Letts has believed his own bullsh*t and invested in shiny new offices and a bunch of salespeople which means i imagine cash burn is now a major issue

[jonc] 22/5/2014 16:40

I have.

It will be appearing at Crufts.

Cute mongrels section.

[tomboyb] 22/5/2014 15:59

You can buy at 103.5p - Up to 15k and anything up to 37.5k online is 107p -

Clearly an overhang here - Its the placing price that has to be considered - and when we find out what price then ill dip my toes in.

Good luck -

[lauders] 22/5/2014 15:52

Not really "Sanks". Your immature and obscene spouts over numerous threads are a waste of everyone's time so the best thing to do is just have you on filter. Done! Doubt you could even string a sensible sentence together.

[sanks] 22/5/2014 15:44

I don't feel safe in placing my nob on the table yet...i will wait till i hear the stock hitting the floor.

Sheila told me to wait till 11p-7p range for the dead cat loola bounce to 47p
Hope this helps

[lauders] 22/5/2014 15:06

Your still holding EJ? Brave chap! Best of luck to you. The lack of reply sounds mighty unprofessional.