itim Group plc (LON:ITIM) Founder and Chief Executive Officer Ali Athar caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss what the company does, its typical customers, its impressive Board and retail advisory committee and what investors can expect from the company in 2022.
Q1: First off, can you just explain for us what itim Group does?
A1: Probably the best way for me to do this is to share with you a brief video which we put together, which has three of our customers talking about what we’ve done for them. This was prepared as part of our IPO so let me run that first and share that with you.
So you’ll see from the video, we are effectively a software company providing a cloud-based end-to-end software platform, supporting retailers, I’d like you to think about it as a digital ERP for retailers. We do about £14 million in revenues of which £11 million is recurring and we’ve historically been, and hopefully will continue to be, EBITDA positive.
We see our mission as helping retailers compete with their online competitors through achieving what we are calling omnichannel excellence, something which you’ll see was reflected in the video. What it actually means is that retailers have suddenly realised that their stores are really an asset, not a liability, even in the digital age. The reason for that is that, as they capture customer data, they’ve realised that something like 85% of their customers live within 15 minutes of their stores, so they can serve them much better, more quickly through their stock in their store network by offering click & collect services or dispatch from store.
Of course, this have been made so much easier with the growing network of local career networks in most of the major cities throughout the UK and our software helps retailers enable that.
Q2: Just in terms of your customers, can you give us an example of who they would be and what do you actually do for them?
A2: We provide an array of services for the likes of John Lewis, Sainsbury’s, JD Sports, WH Smiths and Majestic Wine, amongst many other customers, we have about 50 retail brands using all or elements of our software platform.
For example, many of them use our advanced invoice matching system called Didos, others use our stock and price optimization profit metrics, and others use our store systems platform called Chameleon and of course, some of them use our total platform, which we call The Retail Suite.
Q3: Now, I was looking at your Board earlier, it looks very impressive. Can you tell us more about who’s on the board?
A3: We have a very heavyweight Board with both public listed company experience and considerable retail experience of particular note.
We have Justin King, Justin was one of the most successful CEO’s of Sainsbury’s for 10 years and is currently a non-exec director of M&S and well known in the retail industry. We also have Michael Jackson, who’s our Chairman, who is very well known in the technology sector, he was the ex-Chairman of Sage for 10 years and former Chairman of PartyGaming and has had a very successful career as a venture capitalist. Also, we have Lee Williams, the former CFO of French Connection, and he’s spent most of his life as a Finance Director in the retail industry.
So, all three of them amongst other non-execs bring a wealth of experience and significant connections in the retail industry to our Board.
Q4: You also recently announced a new retail advisory committee, can you tell us who’s on the committee and what this means for the company?
A4: Underneath the main PLC board, we’re very fortunate to be able to draw on the experience of retail focused advisory board members, that includes the likes of Beth Butterwick, currently the CEO of Jigsaw. Beth’s had a sterling career in the retail industry in the fashion sector.
In addition, we have Simon Foster who’s the former CEO of Selfridges, Simon is well known for having helped many retailers transform their businesses for the digital age and is particularly a champion of omnichannel retailing.
Chris Book-Carter has also joined the advisory board. He’s currently the CEO of the Retail Trust, which is one of the largest industry charities, but before that he was also the Managing Director of Retail week, the largest trade magazine in in retailing and also is very connected in the retail community.
So, this provides us with people with leading insights into the industry trends and access to key decision makers in the retail space.
Q5: Just looking forward, can you give investors an idea of what to expect from itim in 2022?
A5: Following a successful IPO in middle of 2021, we think 2022 will be a pivotal year for the business as we continue to grow our already considerable client base.
Our recurring revenue model gives us complete confidence in our forecast and our pipeline of opportunities has never been so good. The principal reason for that is, as you can imagine, most retailers are trying to transform their business to become omnichannel excellence so they can compete in the digital age.
So, we are seeing a significant demand for our services and as a result, we’re very optimistic for the prospects for the business.
