Covata Limited (ASX:CVT) Head of Finance and Company Secretary Steven Bliim provides an update on the company's expanded offering following the acquisitions of CipherPoint, its IP from dataglobal, sales and its refreshed marketing efforts.
Rachel Jones: Hello I'm Rachel Jones, from the Finance News Network. Joining me today from Covata is Head of Finance, Steven Bliim. Steven welcome to FNN.
Stephen Bliim: Thank you, I'm glad to be here.
Rachel Jones: So first up, could you start by giving us an introduction to your company?
Stephen Bliim: I've been with Covata since 2012, and it's been through many evolutions. In November 2014 though we took the step and listed on the Australian Securities Exchange. At the core of it our products discover, classify, control and protect data and sensitive information for governments and business. What this really means is that it enables organisations to manage the data, and through its life cycle, whether it's creation, storage, right through to making the decision whether you take that data archive it or ultimately delete or destroy that information.
Rachel Jones: Now to your technology, can you tell me about it in a bit more detail?
Stephen Bliim: Our data security platform provides a framework if you will for organisations to know where their data is, protect it, either through encryption or by shifting it off the open network. Or classifying that information so that managers can tell whether it needs to be protected. Say you have tax file information being held on a data repository somewhere, or whether it doesn't need any protection at all such as marketing brochures or something that's publicly available. We'd like to think of it more as a data governance suite of products.
Rachel Jones: What kind of organisations need to think about protecting their data?
Stephen Bliim: Just in February this year the Australian government introduced the Notifiable Data Breaches Scheme. What this really does for any organisation that holds personally identifiable information, which relates to their customers. They're now accountable to ensuring that they know where that data is, that an appropriate level of protection is applied to where it's stored. Ultimately if they suffer a breach they need to tell the government about it, and so this is really, what it does is brings this data security to the fore of managements minds. This was traditionally an issue that the IT department had to solve, but it's now needing to be addressed at the board level.
Rachel Jones: How does your company differentiate from other offerings?
Stephen Bliim: Ultimately what Covata does is through its discovering, classifying, controlling who can access that data and protecting it. Either by putting it in an encrypted network or storing it offline. At the core of it, it's the ability to bring all those things together with our data security platform that sets us apart from the competition.
Rachel Jones: Now to your financials, can you provide a snap shot?
Stephen Bliim: The last financial year has seen massive growth for the organisation. Really what this is connected to is our renewed sales focus. We're going out into the market, we have additional sales resources deployed here in Australia, across Asia and the Pacific, in the United States and also in Europe covering the UK and Germany at this stage. There's been a marked increase in cash receipts this financial year alone, up over 1000 percent on the year to date, when compared to last financial year. Also our revenues, which interlinked with those cash receipts, have started to grow rapidly as well. Since last year we've reset the team and cut our cost base, so what this really means is that we're doing far more with much less resources than previously deployed otherwise.
Rachel Jones: Steven, now to the company's strategy, how is that progressing?
Stephen Bliim: As we move forward into the next financial year we'll seek to deploy our data security platform into the European and US markets. With this will come greater functionality, including the data classification technology, which we acquired through data global in March. What we'll see is a renewed push into regions where we may not have had success earlier, because of the limitations of our single product focus. With the move to the data security platform, what we'll see is renewed interest in managers being able to manage their data across its life cycle. This should open new channels for us across the globe, and also bring new marquee clients into the business.
Rachel Jones: Last question Steven, why should investors consider Covata for their portfolios?
Stephen Bliim: As I mentioned earlier GDPR is pushing companies to think more about where their customer data is sitting, and what they're doing with it. The opportunity is massive, one research company estimates the cost to companies next year will be 2.1 trillion dollars. The opportunity is just enormous. Now we're not saying that we'll capture the entire market. Certainly management’s expectations are quite realistic around our existing acquisition lead strategy and how we'll look to take on that market, and really capitalise on growth in this space.
Rachel Jones: Steven Bliim thanks for the update.
Stephen Bliim: Thanks for being here.
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