FairFX Group PLC (LON:FFX) Chief Executive Officer Ian Strafford-Taylor caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss the proposed placing to raise £5.25 million, the investment from Crystal Amber Fund, corporate card segment, marketing channels and their organic expansion strategy
Q1: Ian, FairFX Group put out an announcement this morning regarding a placing to raise £5.25 million and £5 million of that coming from investment by Crystal Amber Fund. Can you provide us with a little bit of background for the placing?
A1: Yes, I think even at IPO what we really wanted to have was to have a, if you will, a cornerstone institutional investor and now we‘ve finally got that so it’s not just the quantum of the investment itself in terms of the size but we’ve got an institution there that I think other shareholders, be they current or potential, can look at and see that there’s an institution that’s looked at us in detail and likes what they see and backs the story in the long term. So that was the motivation as well as obviously the funding into the company.
Q2: So the focus now is going to be on the corporate card segment but where will the focus be in terms of marketing channels this year?
A2: For this year the marketing mix will be slightly different than it was in 2015, 2015 we were very much focussed on growing the retail card section of the business and we’ll carry on doing that this year however added into that, as you mentioned, is the corporate card platform. We have a unique platform there that doesn’t really have any competitors in the space, the market size is pretty much similar to the retail travel money segment. How you go after that is a little bit different than retail where TV is the optimal channel accompanied by some digital advertising, with corporate you go after it with a certain amount of digital activity but also a lot of inside sales so people that work here making outbound phone calls and a lot of affiliate activity as well so it’s going to beef up our affiliate section. So a change in mix and also I think what investors should look to is that we’re not just a retail card platform, there’s far more to us than that and we’ll be expanding on more frontiers than just the retail card for 2016 and beyond.
Q3: OK, can you tell me a little bit more about FairFX Group’s plans for your organic expansion strategy? What does this involve?
A3: Within that category of organic, I’d include rolling out our platform to other locations because the technology’s exactly the same so we have a very flexible platform that we can deploy in other locations, within Europe we can do it from here so all our servers run from here so passporting across the EA means we don’t need to be opening up bricks and mortar etc. in other locations. So that’s where we’re going to focus, starting with Ireland and then other countries as and where we see that there’s enough potential demand. The other good thing about that is that’ll be meaning that we doing more business on the so-called peer-to-peer part of our platform i.e. netting off business before we have to go out to the market place to hedge it so that’s where we’ll be focussing organically.
Q4: Now you also included some key trading highlights from 2015 with turnover increasing by 32%, were the numbers what you expected?
A4: The short answer is yes, even within that turnover number if you look at the customer acquisition numbers, you can see that where we added customers, and actually where we grew more within the turnover, was in the areas we wanted to i.e. the higher margin piece of the retail card section is where we grew most and less in the areas such as cash in the post where we make less margins. So the fuller breakdown of the numbers will reveal a bit more of that but there’s enough clues in the trading statement today. So yes, we’re extremely happy with 2015 and now we’ve got this transaction out of the way in good time for the seasonal summer months for the retail area of the business, we’re in very good shape for this year.
