ASX ANNOUNCEMENT
1 October 2015
Two Months Post-Launch, World Phone Revenues Are Flowing
At Over $400,000 Annualised Run Rate
Highlights:
- World Phone revenues currently flowing at an annualised run rate of over $400,000, only two months since launch
- Worldwide downloads for World Phone now exceed 300,000
- World Phone downloads in September up more than 54% on previous month
- World Phone revenue for September up more than 68% on previous month
- Positive link between overall number of downloads, increasing revenue and decreasing customer acquisition costs continuing
- Optimisation of World Phone features to enhance ongoing average revenue per user, alongside partnership initiatives, such as with Booking.com
Telecommunications pioneer Norwood Systems Ltd (“Norwood” or “the Company”) (ASX:NOR) is pleased to announce that World Phone is currently generating revenue equivalent to a run rate of over $400,000 in revenue per annum, only two months since launch.
World Phone is a revolutionary communications App for international travellers that harnesses the “sharing economy” to provide access to high quality, low-cost telecommunications providers around the world, making it easy and affordable to make voice calls from a mobile device wherever you are around the globe.
Revenue comes from World Phone users buying additional calling time for use with the App, or from subscriptions for leasing local numbers or monthly plans. All of these purchases are accomplished inside the World Phone App, using existing account details held by the iTunes App Store.
Norwood’s recently signed strategic partnership agreement with Booking.com will also bring additional revenue to the Company, in the form of shared Booking.com commissions from stays booked by World Phone users via the partnership. Additional future revenue streams from World Phone remain under consideration.
Other indicators continue to trend positively for World Phone, including engagement and total platform usage alongside a decreasing cost of customer acquisition. Revenue is currently split 50/50 between one-off consumable purchases (extra calling minutes) and subscription-type items (local number leases, monthly plans). With the initial focus on acquiring new customers, Norwood has not yet applied significant engineering or marketing resources on optimisation to increase revenues per user.
Norwood Systems CEO and founder, Paul Ostergaard, commented: “We are very pleased with this initial revenue for World Phone only two months since launch. People are using World Phone, they are loving the ease of use and flexibility that this App brings, and now they are paying to use it.
We’ve applied minimal resources so far to optimise revenue from the platform, so it is great to see such results before we have introduced our planned additional features to increase average revenue per user. From the beginning, we have focused on building a great product to acquire high-value users that are most likely to contribute revenue to Norwood. Even though we are at the earliest phases of this strategy, we are delighted to see it is already showing some strong initial success.”
“We believe our early numbers set us up well for continued growth, particularly noting that revenue from World Phone is currently growing faster than downloads.”