Who exactly is Task Group?

Task Group started out in 2000 with a mission to provide an affordable, stable and streamlined way to deploy and manage large quantities of POS terminals across dispersed enterprise environments. This allows companies to manage orders regardless of where they originated from.

Simply put: they help businesses, like restaurants and cafes, set up and manage the systems they use to take orders and payments.

After merging with Plexure in 2021 the group reached a new level of customer engagement, supporting some of the largest names in hospitality, including Starbucks, McDonald’s, and Guzman y Gomez, to innovate and create better ways to build loyalty and digital customer experiences and take their brands further into global markets.

Performance Breakdown

Revenue

Plexure & Task merged on the 1st of October 2021 and the financials above represent Plexure’s performance prior to this date with a year-end date of 31st March. The 2022 performance includes 6 months of Task’s contribution ($6.4m) with management estimating it would have contributed $19.5m had it been included for the full year.

The 99% uplift from 2022 to 2023 is driven by:

• A $21.7m increase in the Plexure division income, reflecting eight months of the new commercial arrangements with Mcdonald’s and a significant increase in usage of the Plexure platform

• The inclusion of Task for the entire year providing an additional $10.7m (FY22: $6.4m, FY23: $17.1m)

There was a further 36% uplift comparing H1 of 2023 to H1 of 2024, again reflecting the inclusion of the new arrangements with Mcdonald’s, providing an increase of $12m to revenue, offset by some declines across other customers to bring the total increase to $10m.

Gross Margin

The increase in Gross Margin from 2022 to 2023 reflects the increase in high margin subscription revenue ($18.3m to $24.0m) and a decrease in the lower margin consulting service revenue ($10.8m to $7.3m).

The consulting service revenue comes from value-add professional services tailored to software development and/or enhancement - there may have been some services delivered to McDonald’s as part of there onboarding that increased the consulting revenue in 2022 although the annual report doesn’t comment on it.

EBITDA

In the half, the Group further invested in people, increasing FTE by 35% to 248 people, resulting in an increase in operating expenses by $8.135m. Despite the increased investment in people the Group recognised a positive $848k EBITDA in 1H2024 vs an EBITDA loss of $804k in the same period 2023.

This is due to the strong revenue growth of $9.5m discussed above and a slight decrease in Share Based Payments of $237k.

Our view

Next week: comparable transactions & deal specifics