Appier’s Ascent Accelerates in Q3 with Revenue up 50% to a Record High and Revises Full-year Forecast Second Quarter in a Row

Highlights in the third quarter of fiscal 2021 include:

• FY forecast revised 5.5% upwards from 11.7 billion JPY to 12.3 billion JPY
• YoY revenue up 50% to historical high of 3.2 billion JPY
• EBITDA margin turns positive for full quarter for the first time in company history, up 16 percentage points YoY
• Gross profit up 62% YoY
• Annual recurring revenue (ARR) up 48% YoY
• Operating income margin improvement of 14 percentage points YoY
• Quarter-on-quarter customer growth of 7.7% with a historical high of newly added customers

New quarter, new record

TAIWAN – 11 November 2021 – Appier Group Inc (TSE: 4180), henceforth referred to as Appier, today announced its Q3 earnings results for its third quarter ended 30 September 2021. The period shows a continuation of the strong post-IPO trajectory reported for Q2 in August. Revenue reached a record high of 3.2 billion yen, repeating the 50% year-on-year (YoY) increase seen in Q2 despite a much higher base in Q3 2020. Gross profit outpaced revenue growth to increase by 62% YoY. This was due in part to a gross margin increase from 46% to 50%, and in part to revenue growth acceleration. Demand from sectors such as e-commerce for AI-enabled customer insights, and for tools to support transformation from businesses in a wide range of industries, helped to fuel growth.

Annual recurring revenue (ARR) climbed 48% to 11.7 billion yen. Appier’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) margin rose 16 percentage points to achieve profitability for the first time in Appier’s history with a two percent margin. Accelerated revenue growth was again a driver, together with strong operating leverage. Operating income margin improved 14 percentage points YoY. The results mean Appier has overachieved on more than 10% of its business goals and is increasing its forecast from 11.7 billion yen to 12.3 billion yen.

“We are extremely proud of our achievements this quarter, especially our  50% revenue growth on a much higher comparative quarter,” said Dr. Chih-Han Yu, Appier’s CEO and co-founder. “Our growth this quarter can be attributed to clarity of purpose and goals. Supporting our customers on their AI-enabled digital transformation journey continues to be a driving force for Appier. Our solutions have transformed industry trends into a tailwind and accelerated our growth. We have demonstrated that we help our customers comply with third party data restrictions as well as achieve their business goals with superior AI technologies. At Appier, our solutions mainly require first-party data and have demonstrated its value to our customers, as reflected by this quarter’s results. This creates a sustainable business model for us to continue supporting our customers’ growth.”

As our relationships with customers grow, so does the impact of our services on their business. Our momentum is also down to changing business needs, the growth of data-led consumer experiences, the industry’s move towards a privacy-first landscape and the recognition that AI-powered digitalization will be a key enabler of business success post-pandemic.

Adoption of AI solutions deepens
This quarter’s strong performance reflects the growth of the industry and the demand for AI-powered digital transformation among our customers. This expansion of relationships reflects Appier’s commitment to customer growth and ethos of growing in line with the businesses it serves.

The rate of net new customers rose 7.7% quarter-on-quarter (QoQ), the highest organic incremental increase yet, and 28.6% YoY. In terms of business sectors driving growth, e-commerce continued to show strong demand, together with businesses in more traditional areas undergoing transformation and looking to strengthen their ability to connect with consumers in a digital-led environment.

Customers in Northeast Asia continued to account for the largest share of global revenue at 64%, followed by Greater China (26%), Southeast Asia (7%) and other markets (3%), mostly from the US. Having entered the US in Q4 2020, Appier is finding traction in the market and expects business to grow steadily based on the ongoing global demand for AI and in particular AI that is readily applicable to business objectives.

Integration of services drives value
Last quarter, Appier noted the importance of conversational commerce in business and in its own future development. Since the acquisition of BotBonnie, an omnichannel chatbot platform in May, Appier has integrated BotBonnie with its AI solutions and has created cross-product synergies with AIQUA to unify cross-channel structured behavior data and unstructured conversational data. This means Appier is able to capture both web and conversational data to deliver even more relevant and personalized messages to users, driving the prospect of conversion, improving engagement and achieving greater campaign results.

Appier’s solutions are designed to make it easy for companies to apply AI technology to make precise, data-driven decisions, overcome business challenges and achieve growth. AIXON, a first-party-data centric data science platform, is able to unify fragmented data sets with advanced AI technology to build a holistic view of the users across multiple first party data sources. Powered by the scenario-based prediction with AutoML models, AIXON allows clients to successfully unify their first party data from multiple sources, enrich their understanding via AI inferences and predict their future behaviors through AutoML in real time, from churn to conversions and even the likelihood of users visiting a certain webpage or more unknown user affinities.

Appier sees the combined effect of its network of services continuing to drive value. As businesses place emphasis on achieving a complete view of their customers, Appier’s multiple, complementary solutions become increasingly important in the new normal.