Prodigy Ventures Inc. (TSX-V:PGV)is a professional services firm that delivers Fintechinnovation. The company develops software and services with emerging technologies for digital identity, payments and transformation solutions. Prodigy employs ~130 senior technology professionals, has a highly seasoned C-suite led by Tom Beckerman, a technology veteran with 40+ years of experience.
Business Model & Strategy: Prodigy Ventures partners with financial services firms to provide specialized expertise in the digital identity, payments and transformation space. The most common example of digital identity is the use case of Verified.Me–the platform that the CRA (Canada Revenue Agency) uses, whereby you enter your bank credentials to log in to their website. Prodigy helps banks build out this infrastructure. They have a Verified.Metoolkit which can be implemented and scaled for any company across any industry. The toolkit is part of their long term strategy to diversify their revenue by providing managed services which has higher margins. On the payments front, if you have used mobile banking technology, chances are you are using Prodigy’s work and Royal Bank of Canada’s Siri integration was built by Prodigy.
Industry Outlook: There has been a recent explosion in the area of digital identity due to the high adoption of financial and banking solutions being accessed through personal and mobile devices and the related data privacy issues which are also being driven by the GDPR (Global Data Protection Regulation) regulations. The industry is expected to grow to approximately USD 310 Bby 2023 with a CAGR of 25% during 2018-2022 and Prodigy has a first mover advantage in this space.
Financials: Prodigy generated $17mm in revenue in 2018 and is on track to beat that this year with $15.3mm generated in the first 9 months of 2019. Net income for 2018 was $ 176k, which was lower than 2017, however this drop in profitability was due to reinvestment in the company and expansion from 70 to 130 employees. Prodigy has exhibited a 140% growth in revenue over the past 4 years. This growth has been fully organic and has been funded out of working capital. Prodigy has no debt on their balance sheet and has been profitable since inception.
Risks: All the revenues generated by Prodigy come from professional services and their largest client accounts for ~50% of their revenue. Prodigy does not have any patents and their proprietary knowledge essentially depends on the 130+ senior technology folks at the firm, who could be poached by bigger players like IBM/Deloitte.
Investment Thesis & Strategy: Prodigy has established themselves as nimble marquee experts in an area poised for explosive growth and has household names such as RBC & TD as clients. They doubled their firm size last year to keep up with the growth and did so without raising any additional capital or debt, while remaining profitable. That is the best evidence of a highly capable and financially prudent Management team. Management has made it explicitly clear that they are currently seeking acquisition opportunities to further accelerate growth. Acquisitions should lead to new clients/geographies, cross/up sell opportunities and potential for synergies.
A number of investment strategies can be employed with regards to Prodigy. Senior secured private debt financing to Prodigy is one such option. For investors, looking for a bit more creativity, debt financing with a convertible equity option is another potential option.
Comments