Listed communications workflow platform Whispir (ASX:WSP) has raised just over $45 million to accelerate its product roadmap and market expansion, issuing 12.1 million fully paid ordinary shares to sophisticated, professional institutional investors at $3.75 per share.
Well supported by both new and existing shareholders, the oversubscribed Placement represented about 11.6% of the company’s existing fully paid shares on issues before the raise.
Placement proceeds will be split into thirds – boosting investment in product development, expanding the mature ANZ and Asia businesses, and executing Whispir’s new go-to-market strategy in North America.
Whispir will also raise up to $3 million via a Share Purchase Plan for retail investors. Eligible shareholders can apply for up to $30,000 worth of new shares at the same issue price as the Placement ($3.75) from 9 March.
Commenting on the successful Placement, Whispir CEO Jeromy Wells said, “Since our IPO in June 2019, Whispir has been executing on its growth strategy, increasing ARR, revenues and customers within our mature ANZ business and growing operations in Asia and North America. Digitisation tailwinds provide a significant opportunity for us to fast-track our product roadmap, delivering higher-value products to drive platform utilisation and adoption. Funds raised will also enable us to increase our presence within the competitive North American market, where we are targeting underserved SME and SMB organisations.”
The capital raise follows a strong 1H FY21 performance for the company with Annualised Recurring Revenue (ARR), revenue and customer numbers all growing strongly compared to the prior corresponding period. ARR of $47.4 million was up 29.2 percent on the same period last year while revenues increased 27.3 percent to $23.1 million.
Whispir attributed strong new customer growth to increased demand for digital transformation programs, onboarding a record 77 net new customers during the half-year period. Customer numbers now total 707, up from 509 for the same period last year.
Our Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) operations continue to outperform our expectations with revenue increasing 30.2 percent over the prior corresponding period. Our enterprise customers are spending more with us as they increase use cases, utilising our contemporary tools to solve more of their communications challenges. This region is also experiencing strong growth in new customers as organisations look for platforms that can be implemented quickly to digitise their business communications,” said Wells.
“While ANZ currently accounts for around 81.9% of total revenues, Asia and North America are key to our longer-term growth strategy and we anticipate these markets will account for 50% of Group revenues by the end of FY23. We are sustainably building our footprint within Asia and leveraging past learnings within North America to ensure we are able to capitalise on our largest market opportunity.”
The Company is targeting ARR in FY21 of between $53- $55.3 million, revenue in the range of $49-51 million and EBITDA is expected to be a loss of between $4.5-$3 million.
