MOL Global, Inc., based in Malaysia and a leading e-payment enabler for online goods and services in emerging and developed markets, announced its unaudited financial results for the third quarter of 2015. MOL shared its financial and operational achievements, but MOL gave us some information about its strategy for the future of its business.
The rapid growth in smartphone usage has led to major gaming companies and other key players striving to embrace the mobile space rapidly. Everyone has been expanding its payment solution to capitalize on this mobile market space. These initiatives have led to MOL´s priority department on an array of mobile enabling strategy in building and growing its mobile reach, in particular fortifying its expansion into carrier billing business.
Adding to its strong foothold in the PC game market, MOL has further expanded its mobile games content library since the beginning of this year. MOL has built its game library portfolio with 70 mobile games in its portfolio. MOL has been successful in attracting the stable game companies to work with the company. Game companies have signed up with MOL; can access the market and monetize game content. MOL solution is not just about providing a payment channel for gaming. MOL has observed a key trend in the industry of gaming company seeking its assistance in promoting their games through value added campaigns. Through carrier service, MOL offers a one-stop solution for these game companies to promote their games in the emerging markets by working alongside the channels that are affiliated with MOL.
During the third quarter, MOL grew its net revenues by 35.5 % year-over-year to MYR 63.9 million. This was driven by solid revenue and volume growth in its core payment businesses for MOLPoints, MOLReloads, and MOLPay and was partially offset by a decline in MMOG.asia revenues. Over the last 12 months, MOL has been focusing its key effort on driving growth in its payment volumes and revenues across all business segments by analyzing the three Cs, content, channel and community.
The third quarter 2015 highlights consolidated revenue increased by 35.5% to MYR 63.9 million (US$ 14.6 million) from MYR 47.2 million in the prior year period.
MOLPoints’ segment revenue increased by 40.2% to MYR 42.8 million (US$ 9.8 million) from MYR 30.5 million in the prior year period.
MOLReloads’ segment revenue increased by 14.3% to MYR 10.7 million (US$ 2.4 million) from MYR 9.4 million in the prior year period.
MOLPay’s segment revenue increased by 121.4% to MYR 6.7 million (US$ 1.5 million) from MYR 3.0 million in the prior year period.
MMOG.asia’s segment revenue decreased by 14.9% to MYR 3.4 million (US$ 0.8 million) from MYR 3.9 million in the prior year period.
Mr. Preecha Praipattarakul, Co-CEO of MOL, stated, “We are pleased to report solid top-line growth of 35.5% year over year, driven by continued revenue and volume growth in our core MOLPoints, MOLReloads, and MOLPay business lines. The MOLPoints business has achieved key milestones in its effort to converge into the mobile space to complement our strength in PC games. We have increased our mobile game library by signing on more mobile merchants, and we have focused on mobile carrier billing. Our MMOG.asia benefitted from the successful launch of the mobile version of our popular PC game, Boomz in Mandarin for Malaysia and Singapore, and now represents approximately 55 % of total volume for the segment. While we experienced slight pressure on overall profitability this past quarter as a result of additional expenditures, we believe that the revenue growth strategies as well as our determined efforts to reign in expenses will allow us to grow our profits going forward. We are excited by the numerous initiatives being developed and believe that we can cement our position as a leading e-payment enabler in emerging markets.”
Mr. Ramesh Pathmanathan, Group Chief Financial Officer of MOL, stated, “Our growth in this quarter demonstrates management attention on diversifying from PC games into the mobile space. We continue to see growth in our top-line driven primarily by our MOLPoints business. However, we see slight margin compression mainly due to a shift in revenue mix. The carrier billing component of MOLPoints, and MOLPay as a whole, are lower margin businesses compared with our other businesses and continue to grow at a faster rate and contribute more to our overall revenues compared with our other businesses. Together with other key initiatives, focusing on growth drivers in all business lines, we are confident that we will be able to offer consistent long-term value for our shareholders.”
Business Milestones for the next terms are:
- Expanded MOLPoints in Thailand by enabling payment for Happy Cash Card, a mobile prepaid card, in partnership with DTAC, a leading telecom provider in Thailand.
- Expanded MOLPoints carrier billing business by offering its Easy2Pay payment services in Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines.
- Expanded MOLReloads by rolling out bill payment services for the largest water utility company in Malaysia.
Source: MOL
