Bango

Mobile phone payments specialist Bango narrowed losses for the year to March, as turnover grew 48% to £26.1m, driven by a surge in sales in the US.

Cambridge-based Bango saw pre-tax losses for the year reduce by more than 60% to £250,000. Sales in the US and Canada doubled to £20.84m, with the region contributing 80% of total turnover, up markedly from 56% a year earlier.

Ray Anderson, Bango's founder and CEO, said the results validated the AIM-quoted company’s change in strategy. ‘They show that we have made the right move by focusing on the States', he explained, 'as we are now targeting some of the biggest companies in the world’.

Bango has two divisions: Mobile billing and Mobile analytics. Its billing division provides payment collection services to content providers for mobile phones, with US customers including network operators Verizon, AT&T and Sprint. Meanwhile, the analytics arm enables customers to gauge the success of advertising campaigns on mobile phones by providing information on visitors to mobile-based advertisements.

Originally backed by Growth Company Investor in June of last year at 42.5p, Bango shares have since more than doubled to 96.5p. Although they are not especially cheap, with broker Cenkos forecasting pre-tax profits of £1.8m (producing earnings of 5.7p), the shares are worth holding onto for long term growth.