RS2 plc - Interim Directors’ Statement

On 20 January 2023, RS2 Software plc provided an update on the Group’s performance in 2022 and the expectations for the 2023 financial year.

The Board of Directors explained that in 2022, RS2 continued to execute its strategy with resilience, albeit customers were cautious in the execution of signed projects and also held back to new ones. RS2 extended its offering in Latin America (‘LATAM’) through market entry in Mexico, Columbia and Peru through transaction processing services to Payment Service Providers (‘PSPs’). Elsewhere, in Asia Pacific (‘APAC’) services were extended to Singapore and Malaysia, while in the Philippines the Group is in the process of offering additional services to banks using RS2’s own developed mobile application for fund transfers, bill payments, and other banking services. The US subsidiary continued to ramp up its client base for Independent Sales Organisations (‘ISOs’) processing business, while also enhanced its strategy to focus on three business lines: i) Enterprise business, i.e. management of client private infrastructure on the cloud and other processing services, ii) Acquiring processing, which focuses on Payment Facilitators, Payment Service Providers and follow up on existing ISO pipeline, iii) Issuing processing, which is a new business line. Meanwhile, RS2 Smart Processing continued to increase its transaction processing volumes through new and existing customers to a total of 1.25 billion technical transactions.  RS2 Smart Processing is also developing a fully digitized service for faster client onboarding.

RS2 Financial Services – a holder of an E-Money Institution licence issued by the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (‘BaFin’) and a principal member of Visa and MasterCard, set in motion initiatives to provide direct acquiring and issuing services to merchants. The directors explained that RS2 Financial Services is very well positioned in the European market, particularly in Germany.

In terms of financial performance, the 2022 financial results show a stable top line performance compared to the previous year, as the global macroeconomic conditions affected the Group through project delays or lower investments. In fact, the Directors noted that a significant stagnation in investment was noted mid-year 2022 and so the Group applied counter measures which resulted in a positive ramp up in revenue and profitability in the last few months of the year.

In 2023, RS2 will continue to concentrate on implementing and delivering its strategy around its main business pillars of growing and expanding the managed services business, ramping up the US expansion, and building its own direct acquiring business. The Group also plans to invest further in its infrastructure to strengthen the technology and its product offering, offer omni-channel solutions, and go beyond traditional payment solutions. RS2 is also considering some merger and acquisition activities to increase its merchant portfolio. The Directors stated that the outlook for 2023 indicates that the business pipeline is stronger and anticipate a successful year that will also include the launch of several new products including Merchant reconciliations modules, Merchant and Partner Portals and Tokenisation for Issuing Services.