120% revenue and 5 times EBITDA growth delivers first annual profit 

Argo Blockchain Plc, a global leader in cryptocurrency mining (LSE: ARB), is pleased to announce its audited  results for the year ended 31 December 2020.  

Financial highlights 

•  Revenue increased by 120% to £19.0m (2019: £8.6m) 
•  Total number of Bitcoins mined rose from 1,330 in 2019 to 2,465 in 2020, an 85% increase in annual  production 
•  Mining margin 41% (2019: 60%) despite challenging market conditions, including Bitcoin halving in  May 2020 and the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic 
•  Administrative expenses were reduced by £1.1m to £2.4m as a result of series of cost reduction efforts ● Achieved EBITDA* of £7.9m in 2020 compared with EBITDA* of £1.4m in 2019  
•  Delivered net profit of £1.7m (2019: £0.7m net loss) 
•  Cash and digital assets held as at 31 December 2020 amounted to £6.7m (2019: £1.2m) 
•  As at 31st March 2021, the Group held 764 Bitcoin and equivalents valued at a £32.6m based on the Bitcoin price at that time 
• *Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation 

Operating highlights  

•  Strong execution of “smart growth” strategy by new leadership team under chief executive officer  Peter Wall and executive chairman Ian MacLeod following their respective appointments in January  2020 
•  Mining capacity expanded from 210 petahash in January 2020 to 645 petahash on SHA-256 and from  180 Megasols to 280 Megasols on Equihash 

Post balance sheet events

•  All mining machines currently mining have achieved over 100% ROI*, including those installed in  January and February of 2021  
•  Acquired 320 acres of land in west Texas for a total consideration of US$17.5m with access to some  of the lowest-cost clean electricity to support a hosting facility project as part of the next phase of  smart growth in 2022 
•  Raised £49m in new equity for investment in mining rigs, Texas development, blockchain/fintech  ventures including a significant equity investment in Pluto Digital Assets Plc, and working capital 
•  Memorandum of understanding signed with DMG Blockchain Solutions to create Terra Pool, the first  “green” Bitcoin mining pool to be powered by clean energy, in response to climate change concerns  
•  Shares admitted to trading on the OTCQB Venture Market in January 2021 and upgraded to trading  on the OTCQX Best Market in February 2021 
•  On 2 February 2021, the Group signed a Sale and Purchase Agreement with GPUone for the purchase  of two data centres in Quebec 
•  Q1 2021 was the most profitable quarter to date with 387 Bitcoin mined, revenues of £13.4 million and a mining margin of 81% 
• "ROI defined as yield of mining being greater than machine cost 

Current Trading and Outlook 

•  Strong start to trading in Q1 2021 driven by rise in Bitcoin prices and stable mining difficulty 
•  Continued investment in new mining capacity, new ventures and strong balance sheet has positioned Argo for long-term growth 
•  Well placed to benefit from robust trading conditions amid buoyant demand for cryptocurrency  

Commenting on the results, Peter Wall, CEO, said: “Argo crossed a major inflexion point in 2020 in its history  by achieving full-year profitability on a 120% increase in revenue, our second consecutive year of triple-digit  top-line growth. With a proven management team, world-class mining infrastructure, and strong tailwinds from  the industry’s recent growth, the Board looks forward to the future with great confidence.” 

EQ Investors (EQ), the B Corp wealth manager is pleased to announce that it has partnered with Fintegrate to bring its Positive Impact and Future Leaders portfolios to more advisers.

Fintegrate is a new innovative, digital financial planning solution aimed at helping advisory firms to reduce complexity, time, and cost, whilst delivering optimum client outcomes.

Through integration with other best of breed technologies, including EV (EValue) and FE fundinfo, Fintegrate delivers vital automation helping streamline what are often perceived to be the most time-consuming and challenging areas of the financial planning process. From portfolio risk analysis, financial forecasting, portfolio reviews to white labelled client reporting, Fintegrate’s customisable approach provides advisers with complete control.

Damien Lardoux, Head of Impact Investing at EQ, said: “This is an exciting stage in the development of our model portfolio service offering. We are focused on meeting advisers’ evolving needs by offering a range of tools to help them deliver the best service outcomes for their clients".
“Expanding our model portfolio service to include integration with Fintegrate is another step towards this.”
Lee Parkinson, CEO at Fintegrate added: “We are delighted to have added EQ’s model portfolios to our MPS directory, enabling more advisers to incorporate these into their research, recommendations and client reporting.”

Mollie, one of the fastest-growing payment service providers in Europe, has appointed Rogier Schoute as Chief Product Officer. Schoute joins from Booking.com, where he led payments product development for the past two years, but first got to know Mollie during his time leading global partnerships for Klarna.

Schoute joined Klarna as a summer intern in 2010, when the company was five years old, employed roughly 120 people and was in the early stages of its international expansion. During his 8.5 years with Klarna, Schoute predominantly focused on payment product development, becoming Director of Core Payments in 2015, then VP Product Payments in 2016. Taking over Klarna’s global partnerships organisation in 2017, Schoute left in January 2019, having helped the company scale to more than US $29bn in gross merchandise volume and US $627 million in operating revenue.

“I first met Mollie in 2018 and was immediately impressed by the company’s team, culture and technology,” says Schoute. “Mollie’s products are beautifully crafted and elegantly simple, which is why both Mollie and its customers have grown so impressively during the past few years. But what’s really exciting, and why I’m thrilled to be joining, is Mollie’s potential. Its team, culture and technology is even stronger than it was three years ago. It has the backing of TCV and a refreshed board that’s ambitious to grow. And its deep, trusted relationships with 110,000+ merchants provides the perfect platform for product development with huge potential across a variety of innovative offerings.”

“We’re delighted to be welcoming Rogier to the team – he’s such an important hire and we couldn’t be happier to have him on board,” says Shane Happach, CEO, Mollie. “Our B-round was all about accelerating geographic growth and investing in product and engineering. In February we announced our expansion into the UK. In April, Rogier joins us to lead the development of the next generation of Mollie’s payments and financial services offering. Rogier’s unique experience in both enabling and managing rapid growth will be of critical importance to Mollie.”

 Worldline, the European market leader in payment and transactional services, today announces a key strategic collaboration with Nexxchange, a leader in software solutions for the golfing sector, to provide safe and seamless payment experience for customers using the online marketplace for managing their membership, booking tee time or hotel rooms at their favourite golf courses and resorts across Europe. Worldline and Nexxchange aim to launch the improved services in over 100 golf clubs in Austria within the next two years with plans to roll the solution out in Germany, Spain, Portugal, and Morocco in the near future.

Nexxchange is an all-in-one 100% cloud-based golf club management software for golf courses, resorts and golf federations, including a free marketplace for online bookings with currently more than 100,000 golfers registered in Europe. It is the only provider in the world to combine a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution for property management systems with a marketplace for all golf Tee time channel bookings. For the golfing sector, Nexxchange has developed a modern, fully integrated booking portal that offer customers a wide variety of Internet services such as administration of memberships, tournaments, tee time bookings, hotel, check-in/out management, and much more.

With this partnership in place, Worldline will integrate its advanced solutions into Nexxchange’s payments infrastructure to create a safe and seamless payment facility for golf courses and resorts. With Worldline’s solutions that are innovative and built with merchants’ needs in mind, the partnership will remove the risks of having to bear the cost of cancellations or “no-shows” from golf clubs and resorts. Worldline’s acquiring capabilities will also enable the clubs and resort operators to receive their money quickly when the payment is initiated.

In addition, Nexxchange’s customers will benefit from Worldline’s technology through stored payment card credentials for seamless booking experience across all golf clubs and courses, and Omni-channel solutions integration for different service providers at the golf club or resorts such as online booking, pay-at-the-table in restaurants, payment in other local facilities, and POS for pro-shops with consolidated reporting for the service providers.

“We continue to focus on Worldline’s ability to facilitate innovation in many different sectors and how we work closely with partners to enhance business models and payment experience for consumers,” said Guillaume Pascal, Head of Global Sales and Verticals, Merchant Services, at Worldline. “Our exclusive partnership with Nexxchange reflects our mission in driving change in which products and services can be offered in the market. We are excited to work closely with the Nexxchange team to build a frictionless booking and payment process for golfers.”

Michael Briem, Managing Director at Nexxchange added: “We are thrilled to partner with a technology leader such as Worldline. Our powerful payment platform will allow Nexxchange to set a new standard in the golf sector by offering card-present and card-not-present solutions with an omni-channel Gateway and help us operate Europe-wide and support our ambitions of becoming a 360-degree provider for the golf scene.”

Enables Analyst Mapping, Benchmarking of Research Pricing and Research Discovery

Substantive Research,  the research discovery and research spend analytics provider for the buy-side, today announced the launch of their new, integrated Dashboard providing asset managers with detailed insights on their research providers’ pricing, sector coverage and investment in analyst teams.

Developed over the last 14 months, the Substantive Research Dashboard started as a simple overview of research providers and benchmark valuations of research spend, and has developed into a budget optimisation and research discovery tool. Additional functionality has been added in close collaboration with asset managers, to include analyst mapping, peer group comparisons, budgeting, rate card benchmarking and market trend reports. 

Using the Substantive Research Dashboard, asset managers can:

• Track and benchmark price trends on research providers, including the industry rate for analyst calls, meetings, corporate access and conferences to ensure they are paying the right price for the service they require from their providers.
• Understand how brokers and independent providers have grown or decreased their sector teams and to what extent they have “juniorised” certain parts of their offering by replacing experienced with more entry-level analysts. This Analyst Mapping tool (launched in November 2020) enables asset managers to have an aggregate view over analyst moves across the market, evaluate where banks invest or disinvest, benchmark sector expertise gains and losses broker by broker, and ultimately decide how to allocate their research spend in relation to the areas and asset classes relevant to them.
• Crucially, the Dashboard allows buy-side firms to browse the mapped provider list and discover insights on pricing and sector coverage changes for providers and sectors that matter to them, both within and outside of their list. This enables asset managers to recognise new areas of quality and coverage inside and outside their existing research provider list - this is particularly important post MIFID II, as they are no longer allowed to access research that they haven’t paid for.

Mike Carrodus, CEO of Substantive Research, said: “Having worked with clients for three years to ensure our benchmarking methodologies address their specific use cases, it is clear that managers want the ability to combine insights on pricing and coverage with an understanding  of how their providers are investing in research quality in the specific areas relevant to them. Our integrated Dashboard allows them to access these insights, to make sure they are paying the right price and also have an up to date understanding of what is happening to the future quality of their research supply.” 

The investment research landscape has changed significantly since MiFID II and throughout the Covid 19 pandemic. Using the tools developed in close collaboration with asset managers, Substantive Research has been able to evidence a 12% loss of analysts in Europe vs a 4% loss in the US; a significant impact on research and analyst pricing during the pandemic, with the value of analyst meetings falling by 47%; and a general juniorisation of research, with the global research market losing 7,500 years of experience since MiFID II.

Jon Furse, Substantive Research CTO, added: “It is now more important than ever to have a clear understanding of the research provider landscape relevant to each asset management firm, from seniority to pricing and sector coverage, in order to optimise research spend while also being able to discover new, relevant providers. What we have set out to do, and have now delivered, is a set of tools that provides asset managers with transparency, insight and control to improve their investment processes and performance.”

The Dashboard is already in use with 50 clients; the roll-out to all Substantive Research clients will be completed in May 2021.

15,00,000+ small retail outlets to participate actively in vaccination drive 

As India prepares for the third phase of the world’s largest vaccination drive making it available for everyone above 18 years, PayNearby, India’s leading branchless banking and digital payments network, has rolled out plans to leverage its wide distribution network to assist citizens in enrolling for the vaccination program. 15Lakh+ PayNearby retail touch points across 17,500+ PIN codes will be leveraged to create community awareness around the program and assist citizens to overcome tech and language barriers, and seamlessly register themselves on the CoWIN app. This step is in sync with the government’s efforts to immunize the country at an accelerated pace.  

The second wave of COVID-19 has gripped the country and in order to overcome this pandemic, everyone needs to get vaccinated at the earliest. The government has strictly prohibited walk-ins at the vaccination centres and has made it mandatory for all in the 18-44 age group to register themselves on the CoWIN portal or the Aarogya Setu app from May 1^st, 2021 onwards. However, most of the population, especially across semi-urban and rural India are not tech-savvy enough to register themselves successfully on smartphones or website. Additionally, they are also inhibited by language barriers which can hinder the registration process. 

To combat this challenge, PayNearby has introduced a CoWIN registration module within its trade app, that will enable PayNearby Digital Pradhans to seamlessly assist local communities to register for the vaccination process. The single click, easy access to CoWIN app from within the PayNearby app at all retail stores in the country will not only help create momentum for the program, but also solve for citizen’s language and tech barriers. The module will include content that drives home the message around the importance of immunization to eradicate coronavirus and will help create large scale community awareness for the program. With this initiative, PayNearby aims to register 10 crore citizens, especially across semi-urban and rural India. 

Digital Pradhans, who have tirelessly served the country with essential financial services during the pandemic, will double up to create vaccination awareness in their local communities, and also handhold them through the registration process. The effort will be to steamline the entire journey, and through pro-booked appointment slots also reduce chaos and crowding at the vaccination centres. 

Speaking on the development, Anand Kumar Bajaj, Founder, MD & CEO, PayNearby said, “As India fights the worst-ever pandemic wave, PayNearby is committed to doing our humble bit to ensure every citizen in the country is vaccinated at the earliest. Flattening the COVID-19 curve eventually rests on judicious vaccination deployment and we are dedicated to accelerating this process through our Digital Pradhan network."

The kirana stores have always been a crucial part of the Indian economy as well as an important hub for community exchanges. They enjoy a very high level of trust and familiarity in their local areas. This local trust will be channelized to create social awareness around the importance of immunization and also assist citizens limited by tech ability and language barriers to seamlessly register for the vaccination program.  

Assisted registrations and pre-scheduling of appointments at retail stores will prevent flocking at immunization centres and help people observe adequate social distancing norms which is critical at this juncture to put a check on the virus spreading any further. Our Digital Pradhans have shown great resilience and spirit of selfless service throughout the pandemic and provided uninterrupted service to ensure citizens had access to essential financial resources to fight the deadly virus. I feel humbled that together we can again contribute to ensuring seamless implementation of the immunization drive and create a safer future for everyone.” 

Merchants using Fiserv’s Clover point-of-sale (POS) solution or Carat omnichannel commerce ecosystem can now accept in-store payments via PayPal and Venmo, per a press release. This comes almost a year after PayPal re-entered the in-person payment space by adding QR code payment capabilities to its app, letting consumers and merchants scan and generate QR codes to complete transactions.

The move builds on PayPal’s trend of partnering with payment solutions providers to expand its in-store acceptance network quickly. Teaming up with Fiserv gives PayPal and Venmo the chance to compete for more in-store payments: The Clover ecosystem facilitated more than 2 billion consumer interactions and $135 billion in gross payments volume in 2020. And PayPal already partnered with payments technology company InComm so clients like CVS can accept PayPal and Venmo in-store and enabled Zettle, which it acquired for $2.2 billion in 2018, to accept its QR codes as well. PayPal is likely working to form new partnerships so it can reach more of the lucrative in-store payment market, which is set to be worth $5.621 trillion in 2021, per eMarketer estimates for Insider Intelligence.

PayPal's in-store push may be well timed as it comes on the heels of a strong performance in 2020 and changing consumer payment habits.

• PayPal’s user base skyrocketed last year, and now, it has the chance to convert its online consumers and merchants to QR code payment users. PayPal counted 377 million users at the end of 2020, including approximately 29 million merchant accounts, up 24% over 2019. That growth is in part the result of ecommerce surging in 2020 as consumers looked to avoid physical stores and merchants turned to digital channels to drive sales. Now, PayPal can push those consumers to use its QR codes and push its merchants to accept them, boosting its in-store business as consumers return to in-person shopping.
• Contactless payments like QR code payments gained popularity during the pandemic, potentially leading consumers to use PayPal’s in-store options. Many consumers turned to contactless payments to limit interactions with shared surfaces and other people. That behavior shift may be here to stay—65% of consumers said that after they’re vaccinated, they would prefer to use contactless payments as much as, or even more than, they currently are, per a Visa survey. That means there should continue to be an appetite for PayPal’s QR code payments as the company builds its acceptance base, potentially bringing the initiative success
• 

SD Worx, a leading European Payroll and HR services provider, has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Aditro, a leading Cloud HR & Payroll software provider in Sweden, Finland and Norway. This transaction advances SD Worx’s ambition to become the reference payroll and HR services provider in Europe. By entering the Nordics, SD Worx strengthens its geographical footprint and position as leader in the European HR and payroll market.

Aditro: Nordic market leader

Aditro employs over 600 people across Sweden, Norway, Finland and Estonia, serving a solid base of nearly 1,200 customers in the mid-market and large enterprise segments (like IKEA, KPMG, Saab and Volvo), supporting about 1 million workers overall. In 2020, Aditro realised revenue of SEK 614.5 million, enjoying a leading market share in Sweden (23%), Norway (34%) and Finland (39%).  

“For SD Worx, this is a unique opportunity to enter the Nordics market and to cover Finland, Norway and Sweden. Both the employees and customers will benefit from the integration of Aditro into SD Worx. The decision to acquire Aditro was driven by our complementary geographies, business strategies, product portfolios and fundamentals as well as our shared cultures and values”, said SD Worx CEO Kobe Verdonck. 

“It goes without saying that we will make sure that the colleagues from Aditro feel at home as part of SD Worx. We will support the existing management team of Aditro, who will remain on board, to realise the promising growth plans and ensure business continuity. Aditro has a well-defined roadmap to further develop its core business, complemented by new strategic initiatives to enhance its future growth outlook, and SD Worx will help in achieving these aims.”

“As we have come to know each other, we realized that SD Worx and Aditro have a similar culture and our values are much alike,” said Martin Sjögren, CEO at Aditro. “By joining a solid leader like SD Worx, we can build further on our digital solutions and expand our offering to meet our customers’ needs and expectations.” 

A match ready to spark

Aditro and SD Worx already enjoy a longstanding relationship, having both founded the Payroll Services Alliance in 2010. Via the PSA they serve customers in 150 countries across the world. The combination with SD Worx will enable Aditro to ramp up its growth ambitions by offering a wider, more international range of HR & payroll services to its customer base. 

“We help our customers realise their digital transformation ambitions through our cloud services and mobile-first approach,” said Martin Sjögren. “We have a modular and feature-rich cloud platform and our mobile app, with a user friendly and intuitive interface, offers full access to all of these functionalities.”

“Now that we are one company, we have a brilliant opportunity to leverage Aditro’s cloud technology and mobile-first approach to bring greater value to all of our customers, and grow our customer-base even further to make our ambition of becoming European number 1 a reality,” added Kobe Verdonck.

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. SD Worx was advised by EY (finance and tax) and DLA Piper (legal). Aditro and R12 Kapital (the Seller) were advised by William Blair (sole financial advisor), Roschier (legal) and Deloitte (finance and tax).