Network Intl profit drops 90%in 2020

Payment processing company Network International announced on Monday that its revenues dropped 15.1 per cent in 2020 to $284 million from $335.379 million in 2019 as profit from operations plunged 90.2 per cent to $5.598 million from $57.31 million a year ago.

The Dubai-based company said a deep decline in profit reflected lower Ebitda (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation) and the write-off of $ 6.7 million of capitalised debt issuance fees linked with the previous lending facility, as a result of refinancing during 2020.

In a statement, the company said although total TPV (total processed volume) declined 23.4 per cent year on year, its recorded particularly strong growth in directly acquired TPV from online merchants of 53 per cent.

“Directly acquired TPV saw significant impacts from Covid-19 lockdowns but as we exited the year, domestic volumes saw a full recovery to 2019 levels and international volumes were only down 45 per cent year on year as the UAE tourism began to see a recovery.

The company said it signed four new payment processing contracts for banks across Africa; saw significant growth in online payments with over 1,600 UAE merchants signing up to our N-Genius payment gateway; and will be entering Sudan as a new market in 2021.

Nandan Mer, chief executive officer, said the company has made great strides during a challenging year; seeing a number of new business wins, strong demand for online payment acceptance, and the expansion of its capabilities through the launch of the digital product platform in partnership with Mastercard.

“While trading and revenue was naturally subdued during the year we started to see a number of positive indicators as we exited 2020, including the progressive recovery of volumes and transactions and a pickup in the pace of new business. The pandemic has also accelerated the move away from cash, towards card and other forms of digital payments, which will help to drive our growth,” said Mer.

He said going forward, the company’s priorities would be focused upon being at the forefront of rapidly evolving customer needs, enabling them to serve their consumers with a wide choice of payment options, successful execution, and progressing with growth accelerators such as the completion of DPO and our market entry into Saudi Arabia.

“We are encouraged by the positive momentum we saw at the latter end of 2020 and the accelerating secular trends that will support our business, which gives us confidence in the long term outlook. We have seen some headwinds to trading during the initial months of 2021, linked to the rise in Covid-19 cases across the UAE and some restrictive measures that have been introduced,” said Mer.

— issacjohn@khaleejtimes.com