Transcription of Finance News Network Interview with Arria NLG Limited (LON:NLG) Chairman and CEO, Stuart RogersLelde Smits: Hello I’m Lelde Smits for the Finance News Network and joining me in London from Arria NLG Limited (LON:NLG), is its Chairman and CEO, Stuart Rogers. Stuart welcome to FNN.
Stuart Rogers: That’s my pleasure.
Lelde Smits: Arria NLG is a software development business, listing on the AIM Board of the London Stock Exchange on December 5, 2013. When was the Company established and what is the Company’s vision?
Stuart Rogers: The Company is about two years old and its vision is to be the global leader in the development and deployment of mission critical, core industrial, enterprise level, natural language generation. That’s what the NLG stands for.
Lelde Smits: Now as you mentioned Stuart, part of Arria’s name NLG describes your core technology, the Natural Language Generation engine. What is it and how does it work?
Stuart Rogers: Think of it as having two components. One is data analytics and its data analytics that sits on top of massive amounts of complex data and in essence, prepares it for narration. It’s been prepared to, for a written report in English as if it were written by your most senior analyst or engineer, or expert within the company.
Lelde Smits: Now looking closer at your listing. What is the issue price and what value does that put on the Company?
Stuart Rogers: The initial listing price should be around one pound per share. That would put the valuation initially at about 100 million pounds.
Lelde Smits: So who’re your main backers and how much has your Initial Public Offering (IPO) raised?
Stuart Rogers: The Initial Public Offering, we’re actually being just admitted to the AIM. We did fund raising over the past 16 months of about $40 million, predominantly from sophisticated high net worth investors.
Lelde Smits: If we can take a closer look at NLG technology, it’s been described as ‘artificial intelligence’. When was it created and by whom?
Stuart Rogers: Natural Language Generation goes back 20/30 years. Our primary scientists began their research and development of the technology, back in the Eighties. But it was really a lot of the work that was done at the University of Aberdeen, when it was a spinoff company called Data2Text, which we acquired. That was started in 2009 and we now own that entire intellectual property.
Lelde Smits: And for how long has the University of Aberdeen been working on the NLG technology; and why have they decided to commercialise it now?
Stuart Rogers: Well the scientists, their focus goes back about 30 years. The University has a long history with both computer science computational linguistics, and with language. As you know, the University goes back to the 15
th Century. But recently, the problems that NLG solves, it really has to do with the coming of the whole big data phenomenon. So it sits on top of big data and it provides narrative reports. That’s the focus on commercialisation that’s very recent.
Lelde Smits: Now Stuart as our dependence on technology increases, so is our reliance on big data. But what kind of problems does big data present for businesses?
Stuart Rogers: So for example, on an oil and gas platform in the Gulf of Mexico, you have complex equipment. It’s producing an inordinate amount of information about the operation characteristics of a compressor or a pump, or some other piece of equipment. The software in essence produces the diagnostic reports of what’s going on with that equipment.
Lelde Smits: So what kind of sectors best utilise NLG and where have you noticed the greatest demand?
Stuart Rogers: NLG is really applicable to a number of different industries. But right now our focus is on the big data challenges in the oil and gas industry, in financial services. We’re also working in weather forecasting and in healthcare.
Lelde Smits: Who have you set your sights on next and where do you see the best growth prospects?
Stuart Rogers: Well we’re looking to grow our relationship with Shell; we’re operating on six oil and gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico but working with Shell, there’re a lot of other challenges throughout their global infrastructure. So we’re looking to grow that relationship. We’re also looking to grow into other relationships in the oil and gas industry, along similar lines.
Lelde Smits: Finally Stuart, as you embark upon the milestone of listing what are your ambitions for Arria NLG in your first year as a public company?
Stuart Rogers: A solid performance for our shareholders, solid performance for our customers and growing our business, largely in oil and gas.
Lelde Smits: Stuart Rogers, thank you for the introduction to Arria NLG and all the best as a listed company.
Stuart Rogers: Thank you, it was great to be here.
Ends
