TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - March 1, 2016) - Leading visual search platform Slyce Inc. (TSX VENTURE:SLC) ("Slyce" or the "Company") today announced its financial results for the year and fourth quarter ended October 31, 2015.
The financial statements and Management Discussion and Analysis for the year ended October 31, 2015 are available at www.SEDAR.com.
Business Highlights
Key customer announcements during the three-month period ended October 31, 2015 include the following:
- On August 12, 2015, Slyce announced a partnership with SHOES.COM, the world's fastest growing online footwear retailer, and owner of the leading North American shoe-retailing group, which also includes SHOEme.ca and OnlineShoes.com. Slyce's mobile image recognition platform enables mobile visitors, to SHOEme.ca, to snap pictures of any women's footwear, either in the real world or from sources such as magazines, and be presented with all direct and closely matching products from the extensive SHOEme.ca product line, which can then be purchased with just a few taps.
- On August 26, 2015, Slyce announced that Neiman Marcus had expanded the deployment of Slyce technology to all of its product lines. The significantly expanded, 'Snap. Find. Shop.' feature, available in Neiman Marcus's top rated NM app and powered by Slyce, enables shoppers to snap 3D images of items across any category -- women's apparel, shoes, handbags, jewellery, home furnishings, children's items, pet accessories and men's fashion -- and receive direct or closely matching items from Neiman Marcus's product offering, which can be purchased easily at the point of inspiration.
- On October 6, 2015, specialty retailer Urban Outfitters signed a contract with Slyce to power visual search for mobile commerce. Founded in 1970, Urban Outfitters has more than 230 stores in the United States, Canada and Europe, and operates as a division of Urban Outfitters, Inc., a leading lifestyle specialty retail company that also comprises the Anthropologie, Bhldn, Free People and Terrain brands.
- On October 22, 2015, Slyce and Shoe Carnival announced a signed agreement to integrate Slyce technology.
Financing Update
On February 10, 2016, Slyce terminated its short-form prospectus offering and proceeded with a private placement financing of up to $7 million following agreement with a lead investor to subscribe for up to $5 million in units of the Company. On February 12, 2016, the lead investor subscribed for an aggregate of $1.6 million in 6% interest bearing unsecured promissory notes, which notes have been converted as a subscription for units pursuant to the terms of the Private Placement. As of February 29, 2016, the lead investor subscribed for an additional $1.9 million in units of the Company to bring the current lead investor aggregate subscriptions to $3.5 million in units of the Company. The Company is accepting further subscriptions from the lead investor, and others, and is now moving to close the remainder of the financing.
Technical Highlights
Slyce's main product development focuses during 2015 were adding robustness around its core visual search offering, and introducing new use cases for visual search. Significant attention was paid to creating a system that enables easy onboarding by minimizing the integration efforts required of new customers. This was achieved by expanding automation of product feeds and packaging our products to enable various capabilities within unified Software Development Kits ("SDKs").
Specific technology achievements included the following:
- Universal Scanner - On October 5, 2015, Slyce announced a new set of mobile visual search products. A core product of that suite is the Universal Scanner -- an integrated solution for retailers enabling automated recognition of any type of object such as: physical objects, non-watermarked printed material (catalogues, flyers, in-store signage), and all types of barcodes. The Universal Scanner is embedded in retailers' apps as a native SDK for both iOS and Android, and provides a single camera interface for all types of detections. In addition, Slyce developed a mobile web SDK that enables the Universal Scanner capabilities within mobile browsers. This allows clients to add object-scanning capabilities to their mobile websites by integrating only a few lines of code into their existing website. The User Interface of both the native, and the mobile web SDKs, is fully customizable, and can be adjusted to align with the look and feel of individual clients' apps.
- Slyce Link - On November 25, 2015, Slyce launched its proprietary retail technology solution, Slyce Link, a purpose-built platform that has been in development for over a year and is currently in beta testing with its first major retail customer. Slyce Link is a visual product recommendation system that increases shopping conversions on e-commerce websites. The system enables retailers to show visually similar products to their customers at highly strategic points in the online purchasing journey in order to increase sales, and mitigate cart abandonment. The system is delivered to retailers in the form of JavaScript and native SDKs for both iOS and Android. By embedding a few lines of code, a retailer can add a full visual recommendation experience to their existing website. The User Interface is customizable according to customer needs. At the back end of the system, there is a product feed processing mechanism, image matching engine, and search logic that ensures data consistency between the search results and the product catalogue in the retailer's website. Meta-data filtering is enabled in addition to visual relevancy (e.g. filter according to stock availability, price range, size, product ratings).
- Enhanced 3D Object Recognition - During 2015, Slyce introduced a full 3D object recognition solution that can detect products in any category from retailer catalogues. Slyce launched the solution with retailers operating in verticals such as: fashion, electronics, home décor, tools, and appliances. To enable recognition of specific products in User Generated Content ("UGC") images, Slyce built a system that combines fully automated image recognition flows alongside human-assisted flows. In a typical use case, the recognition process starts with a fully automated attempt to detect the product and, if a match is not identified, the search proceeds to human-assisted flow where "hints" to the algorithms are proven, in real time, such that the most relevant set of products can be matched to the reference image.
The fully automated flow utilizes a statistical matching approach, where the reference image is compared against a large database of pre-indexed images (including multiple images of the same item taken at different angles). The human-assisted flow utilizes the retailer's existing search mechanism to pull a set of potentially relevant items in real time, and then performs a "refinement" process to pinpoint the most similar items. The combined approach enables Slyce to find similar products corresponding to a UGC image within a retailer catalogue, in almost any retail category.
- 2D Content Management System - One of the capabilities of the Universal Scanner is detecting images in printed media such as: catalogues, flyers, and in-store signage. The detection is performed on a mobile device and is a 1:1 image matching against pre-indexed image data. The use case for this content activation is typically campaign based, where new material is published on a periodic basis. Slyce created a content management system to automate new content activation in an ongoing manner, eliminating the need to change anything on the client's app or website. Clients simply send any print material to be activated in a digital format and the activation proceeds seamlessly without any further action by the client.
- Coupon Author - On August 4, 2015, Slyce launched its enterprise level coupon management platform for retailers -- Coupon Author. Coupon Author enables retailers and agencies to create coupons optimized for mobile redemption, distribute them at scale, and enable their consumers to easily find, and save such offers. Retailers can target special offers to specific customer segments depending on their loyalty or affinity to certain brands. The platform has been adopted by retail giants Toys "R" Us, and BazaarVoice to power all of their digital and mobile coupons.
Other technology developments included the following:
- On July 14, 2015, Slyce launched its latest visual search enabled consumer app, 'Craves', a boutique, fashion focused shopping app, available for iOS in US and Canadian iTunes stores.
- On August 13, 2015, Slyce expanded its 3D visual shopping app 'Pounce' to the Android platform.
- On September 17, 2015, Slyce introduced Slyce Insights, a new analytics platform for retailers. The system is capable of collecting data related to visual search from various sources such as the Universal Scanner and Link, and providing detailed Key Performance Indicators ("KPIs") to retailers.
- On October 28, 2015, Slyce introduced a new money-saving concierge service, Scout, into its leading coupons app SnipSnap.
Financial Highlights for the Year Ended October 31, 2015
| For the year ended October 31, |
|
|
2015 |
|
|
|
2014 |
|
| Revenue: |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
Services rendered |
|
$ |
1,417,872 |
|
|
$ |
31,627 |
|
| |
Other income |
|
|
274,420 |
|
|
|
58,176 |
|
| |
|
|
1,692,292 |
|
|
|
89,803 |
|
| Expenses: |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Business development |
|
|
795,170 |
|
|
|
327,124 |
|
| Consulting fees |
|
|
1,605,186 |
|
|
|
2,336,086 |
|
| General and admin and filing fees |
|
|
8,093,620 |
|
|
|
3,285,603 |
|
| Professional fees |
|
|
1,145,454 |
|
|
|
951,497 |
|
| Amortization, share based payments, deferred tax and other |
|
|
2,122,328 |
|
|
|
10,766,069 |
|
| |
|
|
13,761,758 |
|
|
|
17,666,379 |
|
| Net Loss |
|
$ |
(12,069,466 |
) |
|
$ |
(17,576,576 |
) |
- Revenue for the year ended October 31, 2015 totalled $1,692,292 compared to $89,803 for the year ended October 31, 2014, a 1784% increase. Recurring revenue follows client integration and deployment, and is now beginning to expand as a percentage of total revenue. Recurring revenue increased to $408,595 in the quarter.
- Operating expenses for the year ended October 31, 2015 totalled $11,639,430 as compared to $6,900,310 for the year ended October 31, 2014. The increase in expenses is primarily due to expanded operations as a result of acquisitions and increased sales and marketing initiatives.
- Net loss for the year ended October 31, 2015 was $12,069,466 as compared to $17,576,576 for the year ended October 31, 2014.
- Total comprehensive loss for the year ended October 31, 2015 was $12,065,685 or $0.09 loss per share based on 129 million shares, compared to a total comprehensive loss of $17,578,347 or $0.29 loss per share based on 60 million shares for the previous year.
- Loss before amortization, share-based payments, depreciation, and other expenses was $9,947,138 for the year ended October 31, 2015 compared to $6,810,507 in 2014.
Financial Highlights for the Fourth Quarter Ended October 31, 2015
| For the quarter ended October 31, |
|
|
Q4-2015 |
|
|
|
Q4-2014 |
|
| Revenue: |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
Services rendered |
|
$ |
483,595 |
|
|
$ |
27,127 |
|
| |
Other income |
|
|
177,863 |
|
|
|
51,433 |
|
| |
|
|
661,458 |
|
|
|
78,560 |
|
| Expenses: |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Business development |
|
|
173,049 |
|
|
|
327,124 |
|
| Consulting fees |
|
|
306,357 |
|
|
|
695,661 |
|
| General and admin and filing fees |
|
|
1,954,199 |
|
|
|
939,650 |
|
| Professional fees |
|
|
513,107 |
|
|
|
38,625 |
|
| Amortization, share based payments, deferred tax and other |
|
|
(815,821 |
) |
|
|
1,394,497 |
|
| |
|
|
2,130,891 |
|
|
|
3,395,557 |
|
| Net Loss |
|
$ |
(1,469,433 |
) |
|
$ |
(3,316,997 |
) |
- Revenue for the quarter ended October 31, 2015 totalled $661,458 compared to $78,560 for the quarter ended October 31, 2014, a 1683% increase.
- Revenue for the quarter ended October 31, 2015 totalled $661,458 compared to $518,823 for the third quarter ended July 31, 2015, a 27% increase.
- Operating expenses for the quarter ended October 31, 2015 totalled $2,946,712 as compared to $2,001,060 for the quarter ended October 31, 2014. The increase in expenses is primarily due to expanded operations as a result of acquisitions and increased sales and marketing initiatives.
- Loss before amortization, share-based payments, depreciation, and other comprehensive expenses was $2,285,254 for the quarter ended October 31, 2015 compared to $1,922,500 in 2014.
CEO Comment
Mark Elfenbein, CEO, commented, "Growing retailer interest in visual product search and acknowledgement of Slyce as an emerging visual search leader reinforces our confidence in the Company's potential. Revenue growth continued in the fourth quarter. Based on experience gained during the initial months of commercial operation, we are now vigorously refining our sales process and expense stewardship. Despite investor interest, securing additional financing in the current market environment proved challenging and the recently announced private placement financing enables continued execution of Slyce's strategy."
Conference Call
On March 1, 2016 at 4:00 PM EST, the company will be hosting a conference call to discuss this news, featuring a live Q&A session. Access to the live conference call will be available by registering at the following web link. Once registered, participants will be emailed their call-in information and access code to the call. The conference call is open to any investor or stakeholder, including shareholders, broker-dealers and other securities professionals. The call will be recorded and available for review at www.slyce.it. Slyce will be hosting and moderating a Q&A period on the call. Participants will be able to enter a moderated queue to ask a question live on the call, or to submit a question via email. To submit one or more questions to the CEO, please email your question to Roy@slyce.it with the words "Investor Question for Conference Call" in the subject line. Slyce management will endeavour to address as many questions as possible in the hour allocated to the call.
About Slyce Inc.
Slyce, based in Toronto, ON, delivers sophisticated visual search technologies and is currently focused on enabling a powerful sales channel for major retailers and their customers. Consumers, wherever they are, can conveniently engage with retailers by taking pictures of desired products using their mobile devices, thereby initiating the visual search service with near-instant product recognition capability. The Company delivers its technology both as a white-label visual search platform and as a suite of consumer mobile apps. Slyce's technology is used by large retail brands such as Neiman Marcus, Tilly's, J.C. Penney, Urban Outfitters, and Home Depot.
Slyce's business model features multiple revenue streams arising from its visual search platform and consumer apps. The revenue streams include fees for software licensing, integration, purchase transactions, and program promotions.
For image download and further Company information please click for the Slyce Media Kit.
READER ADVISORY
Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
Statements in this press release contain forward-looking information including, without limitation, Slyce's business plan, strategy and related milestones, Slyce's suggestions of future outcomes, the future use and development of its technology, future customers and business partners. The words "will," "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "expect," "intent," "may," "project," "should," and similar expressions are intended to be among the statements that identify forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements are founded on the basis of expectations and assumptions made by Slyce.
Readers are cautioned that assumptions used in the preparation of such information may prove to be incorrect. Events or circumstances may cause actual results to differ materially from those predicted, a result of numerous known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of Slyce.
Slyce does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements except as expressly required by applicable securities laws.
None of the information contained on, or connected to, Slyce's website is incorporated by reference herein.