AND International Publishers NV (ticker

AND.AS) publishes its half year results and trading update

Capelle aan den IJssel, the Netherlands, 12 August 2020: AND International Publishers NV (ticker: AND.AS) is pleased to share today its half year results and trading update

TRADING UPDATE AND HALF YEAR 2020 RESULTS

AND grows topline by 22% and reduces net loss by 19% in Covid-19 impacted economic environment.
Covid-19 and the related measures taken to prevent the spread of the Corona virus have proved to be a significant challenge for the global economy. The AND team and our underlying business have shown resilience: revenue has increased by 22% compared to the same period in 2019. This is mainly due to our success in winning and delivering new service projects, and moderately growing our existing recurring business. The direct impact of the lockdown was felt most in the data sales segment, where it was difficult to connect with key decision makers and win new customers.

OPERATIONAL HIGHLIGHTS AND STRATEGY UPDATE
The year began with a good sales pipeline, but the anti-pandemic measures initiated by the government in March generally had a significant impact on company decision-making processes. However, as our IT systems and operations are well set up for remote working, we could react quickly to the health risks and maintain operational continuity. We also leveraged our knowledge of distributed working to ensure the tasks carried out for us by our Indian production partner were not negatively impacted by lockdown measures.

Our strategy to limit investment in the automotive industry (such as HD Maps) was reinforced by the intense retrenchment this industry has undergone since the start of the pandemic. As announced at our AGM and consistent with our new focus on providing subscription-based location-aware content and services, we are now concentrating our activities on Location-Aware Services, Data Sales and Premium Content creation and sales. To catch up with a slow Q1, we pushed hard on our enterprise activities, direct marketing and new product launches. Our marketing automation reached out to over 60,000 contacts in key markets which are now being qualified through several campaigns. These targeted activities produced several good, short-term opportunities in service sales, generating revenue and creating the basis for some new premium products to be launched in August 2020.