TORONTO, May 28, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Deveron UAS Corp. (CSE: DVR) (“Deveron” or the “Company”), a leading agriculture digital services and insights provider in North America, is pleased to announce revenue growth of 181% year over year to $283,420 in Q1 2020. For the fourth quarter in a row, Deveron achieved sales growth of over 100%.
First Quarter 2020 Financial and Operational Highlights
The Company’s financial performance improved over the previous year’s quarter, driven by the continued customer uptake of Deveron’s soil sampling service. For the three-month financial results ended March 31, 2020 (and comparable period ended March 31, 2019):
- Revenue grew 181% year over year to $283,420 in Q1 2020, from $100,564 in Q1 2019.
- Gross profit grew 160% year over year to $180,212 in Q1 2020, from $69,833 in Q1 2019.
“Our first quarter results are highlighted by continued growth in acres serviced for our data collection group,” commented David MacMillan, Deveron’s President and CEO. “Building upon our successful launch in 2019, we saw increased usage of our collection network reflecting trust from our customers and our team’s ability to quickly turn around orders, helping our farm partners prepare for the spring planting season. Considering that Q1 is typically slow for our business, I think these results continue to illustrate our growing market penetration, the value we provide as a low cost, reliable service provider and that we are on track for another year of substantial growth. We are starting to see our organic sales channels deliver and coupled with our recent acquisition of Better Harvest in Texas, we believe we have a solid foundation on which we can continue to grow our farm acres under management and ultimately, average revenue per acre. Finally, as was the case in 2019, we have already seen net bookings in April and May outpace all of Q1.”
Summary of Financial Results
| Results of operations | For the three months ended | |||||
| March 31, 2020 | March 31, 2019 | |||||
| Total Revenue | $ | 283,420 | $ | 100,564 | ||
| Gross Profit | $ | 180,212 | $ | 69,833 | ||
| Gross Profit Margin % | 63 | % | 69 | % | ||
| Operating Expenses | $ | 748,995 | $ | 952,919 | ||
| Total Comprehensive Loss | $ | (568,783 | ) | $ | (882,919 | ) |
| Weighted Average Common Shares Outstanding | 38.1 M | 37.8 M | ||||
| Per Share: | ||||||
| Comprehensive Net Loss | $ | (0.01 | ) | (0.02 | ) | |
Operational Highlights for Q1:
- On January 7, Deveron announced further collaboration with Huron Tractor, a leading John Deere dealer, to offer data insights and collection products to help deliver increased value to agriculture data while offering additional support to help farmers leverage raw data into value add solutions.
- Increased data collection revenue to $139,786 in 2020 versus $3,332 in 2019.
- Increased data insights revenue of 47% to $143,634 in 2020 versus $97,232 in 2019.
Business Outlook
“Our goal was to achieve significant revenue growth in both our data collections and analytics business. We achieved this in Q1 with revenue growth of 181% over Q1 2019, in what is typically our lowest activity quarter. We moved our strategy forward in Q1 by growing our customer base and increasing the acres under management that we service. This will directly impact the remainder of the year and set us up for solid growth again in 2020. Secondly, with our acquisition of Better Harvest in Texas finalized subsequent to the quarter end, we have initiated an agronomist acquisition strategy which we think provides significant potential to accelerate revenue growth and acres under management. Finally, with a new round of investment completed, our team has ample runway to execute our 2020 plan.”
Subsequent to Quarter End
- On May 11, Deveron acquired Better Harvest, a Texas based agronomy solutions business. Better Harvest provides unbiased agronomic advice, nitrogen management solutions and optimization for irrigation to over 100,000 acres of growers. Better Harvest had unaudited reported revenue of $471,769 USD in 2019.
- The Company also completed a private placement of $1.35 million (see press releases dated April 7, 2020 and April 17, 2020). In conjunction with this financing, Bill Linton joined its Board of Directors, where he will serve as non-executive Chairman. Bill Linton is an experienced Director and private investor. He currently serves on the Boards of TMX Group (TSE: X), Empire Company (TSE: EMP.A), and CSL Group. He has invested in and served as an advisor to and/or Board member of a number of successful technology companies including UXP Systems (acquired by AmDocs), In The Chat (acquired by Pegasystems) and Softchoice Corp. (acquired by Birch Hill Equity Partners). Bill retired in 2012 as the CFO of Rogers Communications Inc. and prior to that was the CEO of Call Net Enterprises.
The Management’s Discussion and Analysis for the period and the accompanying financial statements and notes are available under the Company’s profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. This news release is not in any way a substitute for reading those financial statements, including the notes to the financial statements.
About Deveron UAS: Deveron is a leading agriculture technology company focused on providing data acquisition services and data analytics in North America. Through its on-demand network of drone pilots and soil sampling technicians, the Company is providing scalable data acquisition solutions in the imagery and soil space. Additionally, through its wholly owned subsidiary Veritas Farm Management, the company provides growers in North America with independent data analytics and insights on the massive amount of data being generated on farms today.
For more information and to join our community, please visit www.deveronuas.com/register or reach us on Twitter @DeveronUAS or @MyVeritas_HQ
David MacMillan
President & CEO Deveron UAS Corp.
416-367-4571 ext. 221
dmacmillan@deveronuas.com
This news release includes certain “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of that phrase under Canadian securities laws. Without limitation, statements regarding future plans and objectives of the Company are forward looking statements that involve various degrees of risk. Forward-looking statements reflect management's current views with respect to possible future events and conditions and, by their nature, are based on management's beliefs and assumptions and subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties, both general and specific to the Company. Although the Company believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those in our forward-looking statements. The following are important factors that could cause the Company’s actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward looking statements: changes in the world-wide price of agricultural commodities, general market conditions, risks inherent in agriculture, the uncertainty of future profitability and the uncertainty of access to additional capital. Additional information regarding the material factors and assumptions that were applied in making these forward looking statements as well as the various risks and uncertainties we face are described in greater detail in the "Risk Factors" section of our annual and interim Management's Discussion and Analysis of our financial results and other continuous disclosure documents and financial statements we file with the Canadian securities regulatory authorities which are available at www.sedar.com. The Company undertakes no obligation to update this forward-looking information except as required by applicable law. The Company relies on litigation protection for forward looking statements.