Vianet : Consolidated Annual Report & Accounts – Year ended 31 March 2023

CONSOLIDATED ANNUAL REPORT & ACCOUNTS

YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2023

GROUP PLC

CONTENTS

Section	Page
Company Information	1
Chairman's Statement	5
Strategic Report	8
Report of the Directors	17
Corporate Governance Statement	25
Independent Auditor's Report	32
Consolidated Statement of Comprehensive Income	40
Consolidated Balance Sheet	41
Consolidated Statement of Changes in Equity	42
Consolidated Cash flow Statement	43
Notes to the Consolidated Financial Statements	44-77
Company Balance Sheet	78
Company Statement of Changes in Equity	79
Notes to the Company Balance Sheet	80-87

Vianet Group plc

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COMPANY INFORMATION

Directors	J W Dickson (Chairman and Interim CEO)
	M H Foster (Chief Financial Officer)
	D C Coplin (Non-Executive Director)
	C Williams (Non-Executive Director) resigned 13 July 2022
	S Panu (Non-Executive Director) appointed 13 July 2023
Secretary	M H Foster
Registered office	One Surtees Way
	Surtees Business Park
	Stockton on Tees
	TS18 3HR
Registered number	05345684
Auditors	BDO LLP
	Central Square
	29 Wellington Street
	Leeds
	LS1 4DL
Bankers	Lloyds Banking Group plc
	1st Floor
	Black Horse House
	91 Sandyford Road
	Newcastle
	NE1 8HQ
Nominated Adviser	Cenkos Securities plc
	6. 7. 8. Tokenhouse Yard
	London
	EC2R 7AS
Stockbroker	Cenkos Securities plc
	6. 7. 8. Tokenhouse Yard
	London
	EC2R 7AS
Solicitors	Gordons LLP
	Riverside West
	Whitehall Road
	Leeds
	LS1 4AW
Registrars	Link Group
	Central Square
	29 Wellington Street
	Leeds
	LS1 4DL

1	Vianet Group plc

WHO ARE WE

Vianet Group plc is a leading international Business to Business ("b2b") provider of internet enabled, cloud based, telemetric services to the hospitality, unattended retail vending, and remote asset management sectors where we provide data services, actionable management information, and business insight. Combining data from our customers' assets with our smart, cloud-based, Internet of Things ('IoT') solutions, we deliver critical insight and analysis that drives superior operational performance.

With over 300 customers and nearly 210,000 connected devices across the UK, Europe, and the US, Vianet's experience and knowledge form a powerful market- leading proprietary technology and insight capability.

We connect customers to their assets via single or multiple IoT smart devices which interface to the asset, collecting the relevant data. The machine data is sent to our cloud-hosted IoT platform, where it is processed.

Vianet currently operates in two core business verticals. Our Smart Machines solution is designed for the unattended coffee, snack and soft drink vending machine market, as well as emerging markets such as petrol forecourts, and our Smart Zones solution is designed for the pub and hospitality industry, both connecting customers to their assets and delivering powerful insights and analytics in real-time.

The Group's Smart Zones division provides unparalleled product quality and waste management, business intelligence and stock management services to the drinks retailing industry.

Our Smart Machines division provides innovative real time monitoring, software management applications, business intelligence and data insights for unattended vending machines that significantly improve operational efficiency, stock control, sales, and cash flow, whilst also reducing our customers' carbon footprint. Smart Machines is one of the largest b2b connected solutions providers in Europe with established long-term relationships with major industry players and growing recurring revenues...

By connecting customers to their assets, we gather data from which insight and analytics support improves decision-making and enables our end-to- end contactless payment solution. The outcome for our clients is increased sales and asset utilisation, reduced operating costs and improved operational performance, with more informed customer decision- making.

We achieve this by;

• Increasing utilisation and significantly reducing servicing costs by identifying asset performance opportunities;
• Maximising asset uptime and sales by providing alerts on fault conditions and product availability;
• Providing seamless touchless payment solutions, reducing customer dependency, in a COVID conscious world, on 'dirty' cash, and providing the contactless payment solutions that consumers increasingly desire;
• Improving cash flow management and resource planning by tracking real-time sales performance and enabling more frequent invoicing; and
• Defining potential new procedures, revenue streams, and automation services and incorporating these into the customers' existing processes.
• Real time capture and processing of machine data from the installation base allows customers to significantly improve the efficiency of re- stocking and maintenance operations providing substantial cost and sales benefits whilst also reducing our customers' carbon footprint.

In both divisions, the data collected is structured and rendered through an advanced web portal and mobile applications to provide the analytics and insight that support better business decision making to improve our customers' asset utilisation and profitability.

Whilst our technologies were developed for unattended retailing and hospitality, the flexibility and functionality of our smart devices offer multiple applications and can be connected to practically any machine with a data output. The device used in our Smart Machines division is the same used to connect our contactless payment solution and communicate payment terms to our cloud-based payment services providers. Ongoing successful asset management and contactless payment field trials and conversion have been completed in other verticals such as Fuel Forecourts, fast casual restaurant chains, and environmental services.

As a business, we are passionate about developing innovative solutions and employing talented people focused on transforming business performance.

Our ambitions are underpinned by driving our financial performance through long-term contracts typically with recurring high cash margins and scalable annuity revenue streams that facilitate ongoing product development.

Vianet Group plc

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