Letter to Shareholders
Dear Shareholder,
Thank you for your continued support of Peppermint Innovation.
Global markets are under extreme pressure currently and publicly listed stocks are experiencing a tough time, particularly across the financial and technology sectors.
Recently we have witnessed one of Australia’s blue chip bank stocks hit a 52-week low and financial technology stocks dip heavily. Take for example ZIP which traded as high as $12.35 in February ’21 and a low of 44 cents on 23 June `22 and IOU Pay which traded as high as 61.5 cents in February ’21 and a low of 4.3 cents on 23 June `22.
In light of this share market sentiment, which has also affected PIL, I can understand if you have concerns, however, I want to emphasize that a dip in share price is not a reflection of a dip in the value of our business or what we are doing.
I would also like to take this opportunity to reassure you that your company is working diligently to capitalise on the opportunities that our bizmoto ecosystem is presenting throughout the Philippines.
In my opinion the Company has never been in better shape, with a healthy cash balance to progress our bizmoto operations and to leverage the significant partnerships that are lining up to maximise our recently issued Electronic Money Issuer (EMI) licence. We believe the Central Bank of the Philippines’ (BSP) two-year moratorium on issuing any further non-bank or bank owned EMI’s also provides Peppermint with a strategic opportunity that we are determined to capitalise on.
As a quick reminder, the last 16 months has seen the Peppermint Group:
- raise $2.5 million in fresh equity to re-list on the ASX (Feb ’21);
- granted a licence to operate as a Financing Company by the Securities and Exchange Commission of the Philippines (July ’21);
- further raise $5 million in fresh equity (Nov ’21) ;
- receive over $1.5 million through the exercise of options
- remove all convertible note debt from the Company Balance Sheet; and
- Peppermint bizmoto Inc. be granted an Electronic Money Issuer (EMI) licence Bangko Sentral Ng Pilipinas (the Central Bank of the Philippines) (May ’22).
The Company has also executed significant commercial agreements with DragonPay, PayMaya, GCash, BPI, Cebuana Lhuillier and ECPay, launched our micro-enterprise loan offering (bizmoPay) and our micro-insurance offering (bizmoProtect), as well as improved and enhanced our bizmoto product offering and white label mobile banking platform.
In March, we were also fortunate to appoint global finance innovator Neal Cross to the Company’s Board of Directors. As I’ve previously outlined, Neal will be valuable in advising the Company’s innovation strategy to become a ‘Super App’ that combines employment opportunities with finance products that ‘betters’ the lives of the under-served population throughout the Philippines.
Right now, the Company is refining the bizmoto user platform utilising Neal’s 30+ years of UX design experience while waiting on technical integration with third parties to empower InstaPay and PesoNet settlement functionality which are required to initiate our planned EMI pilot program. Rest assured, we want to get started on our pilot program as soon as possible and stand ready to proceed once this necessary functionality is available to us.
To strengthen our offering, we will be launching our new financial literacy platform next quarter that will not only engage and educate our current agents but will also attract new consumer-based clients to our platform. Using gamification and micro learning, we aim to uplift the financial knowledge of Filipinos and get them into the right financial product to achieve their life goals.
I’d also like to leave you with this interesting point, Coins.ph, a Philippines mobile-App based platform with an EMI licence, was sold earlier this year for a circa US$200 million – after having been purchased by Gojek for around US$95 million in 2019.1 Peppermint Innovation has a commercially proven and deployed growing mobile-App based ecosystem in the Philippines, underpinned by a Finance Licence and an EMI licence, and we are currently being valued at AUD$20 million – less than one-tenth of CoinsPh’s reported sale price?
I thank you for your continued support and encourage you to keep up to date with all our Company news by following us on Twitter (@PIL_FinTech_Co) and Peppermint Innovations’ LinkedIn page, and visiting us at www.pepltd.com.au
Yours sincerely,
Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer
Peppermint Innovation Limited