This month we turn the spotlight on leading smart metering Group, Bglobal (BGBL) and in particular we highlight an announcement of an important new partnership, reported on Valentine’s Day – a day for successful partnerships?

Bglobal Introduction

The most important part of Bglobal’s business involves the installation and maintenance of smart settlement meters as well as data collection from the meters for billing.

Blgobal was floated on AIM in April 2007 and has been making excellent progress since then. Revenue has grown from £4.5 million in the year to 31 March 2009 to £13.2 million in the year to 31 March 2010. In the same period losses reduced from £4.28 million to £0.67 million.

For the half year to 30 September Bglobal reported a pre tax profit of £0.77 million on a much increased turnover. House broker, Charles Stanley, is forecasting a maiden profit of £3.1 million for the full year to 31 March 2011 whilst revenue is forecast to more than double (partly due to an acquisition) to £27.1 million.

Whilst this performance is most creditable, there have been setbacks along the way for Bglobal and it has been impacted by economic conditions. These issues and general market conditions are reflected in Bglobal’s share price which has made little headway since joining AIM.

With 99.7 million shares in issue, Bglobal’s market cap is £37 million at a share price of 37 pence.

Nonetheless, despite a rather sideways share price chart, Bglobal is making good progress with its business. Particularly, its key metric, the number of meter installations, is growing strongly (if not always quite to plan).

The partnership

Turning now to February’s important announcement: Bglobal’s new partnership is with Samsung C&T Corporation and under the terms of a new Memorandum of Understanding Bglobal and Samsung have agreed to work exclusively with each other in order to provide a fully funded solution for the installation of smart meters across the residential and industrial and commercial sectors in the UK.

The RNS statement explains that: “There are approximately 27 million residential electricity meters in the UK and around 2 million electricity meters in the industrial and commercial sector that will need to be replaced with smart meters. The Government will announce in its Spring Package the technical specification for residential meters and the timescale for the roll out and the relationship with Samsung will mean Bglobal is well placed to play a major role in this market as it develops.”

CEO, Tim Jackson-Smith, describes the deal with Samsung as ‘a major step forward for the Group.....which will help to unlock the massive potential this market has to offer.’

AimZine Comment: Whilst talk of ‘massive potential’ does not guarantee success, it is extremely encouraging that Bglobal, whose business is progressing nicely and turning into profit, has now been able to attract a major international partner. It would seem unlikely that Samsung would have troubled to partner with a small AIM company unless they believed in Bglobal’s potential as well.

As always, the purpose of this Snippet column is to highlight an interesting situation worthy of further research and monitoring.

Bglobal's share price

has made little headway

new partnership

with Samsung

will help unlock the

massive potential

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