Pine Labs in FY18: Revenue soars 55% to Rs 303 Cr, losses shrink to Rs 2.5 Cr

Point-of-sales startup Pine Labs that provides enterprises not just with PoS terminals but also software services to promote their businesses as well as hardware maintenance, has revealed its financial figures for the fiscal year ending March 2018 via RoC filings with MCA.

The company has reported a 55.25 per cent growth in revenue making it Rs 302.97 crore in FY18. The losses have shrunk by 33.88 per cent, going down to Rs 2.52 crore by the end of fiscal year 2017-18.

Revenue generated by Pine Labs in FY17 stood at Rs 195.16 crore and the losses incurred were Rs 3.81 crore, for the same period. The expenses of the increased by 67.97 per cent from Rs 191.29 crore to Rs 321.3 crore in FY18.

While sale of products contributed 4.15 per cent (Rs 12.58 crore) of the income, sale of software services earned the company 95.79 per cent (Rs 286.59 crore) of the revenue. Rest was a part of other income.

Employee benefits expense took up 47.79 per cent of the burn for the company, being the largest avenue of expenditure for the PoS company. The figure itself has increased 85.34 per cent from the previous fiscal (FY17), where it was limited to Rs 82.84 crore.

Globally, the Lokvir Kapoor led company operates in 5 major regions - India, Middle East, Southeast Asia, UK, USA. In FY18, the financial performance of the company became stronger on the home ground and USA, while went downhill in all the other regions.

The contribution of Indian market to the revenue grew by 56.71 per cent to 99.5 per cent. While USA’s share jumped 2.4X to become 0.35 per cent. UK operations seemed to have closed down as they earned no money to the company in FY18. Overall, the revenue generated internationally is limited to 0.5 per cent and has a massive scope for improvement.

For instance, the amount earned from Middle East and Southeast Asian countries are below 50 lakhs combined.

In March this year, the company had secured a funding of $82 million from Actis Capital and Altimeter Capital  at $1 billion valuation, and had planned to increase its footprint in Middle East and Southeast Asian countries as well as starting new services like gift cards and loyalty programmes.

Two months later Sequoia Capital had made a secondary exit from the firm by giving its stake up to Temasek Holdings and PayPal. Promoters had also given up partial stakes in favour of the two companies in this secondary share sale round worth $125 million.

The unicorn boasts of tie ups with more than 75,000 retailers and merchants in India and competes with the likes of MSwipe, Innoviti Payments, Ezetap, and Ato Technologies among others.