Parkeon: Continued rise in sales and profitability for the 4th year in a row

The Parkeon group, a global leader in the urban mobility sector through its parking management solutions and its public transport ticketing solutions, reports that it recorded a turnover of 196 million euros over the 2014 financial year, up 6% on the previous year.

Again, and despite the budgetary constraints of local authorities, all the group’s activities (Smart City and Smart Transport) experienced growth. The group actually receives strong demand for urban mobility solutions in emerging countries and there is also a need for simpler and smarter services in Europe and North America.

The increasingly enhanced commercial endeavours of the group have lead to new markets being opened up, especially in the former republics of the Soviet Union. In these countries and the Asia-Pacific area, new investment has been put into local sales teams, dedicated to these markets, who are capable of establishing partnerships with local stakeholders with a view to facilitating contact with policymakers or decision-makers.

The group saw a 72% rise in its Ebitda over the financial year, which now totals 31 million euros. This growth in profitability boils down to two factors:

• It emerges from the added value provided to our clients (local authorities) and the residents of towns and cities.
• It is the result of the digitalisation of Parkeon’s offer which greatly increases revenue without increasing costs.

The added value provided by Parkeon

The Parkeon solutions make urban mobility simpler, more ecological by promoting smart transport (public transport, cycling, walking) and by optimising parking for the vehicles of individuals and companies.

For residents and companies, the tangible advantage involves:

• Access to a unique and straightforward solution in terms of paying for bus and tramway travel or cycling or parking vehicles. This is regardless of whether the payment is made in cash (coins), credit or debit card or using your telephone.
• Access to right information at the right time: in your vehicle looking for a parking space or delivery area, in the street looking for a shop or service, calling a taxi or discovering any problems with public transport, on your phone to receive highly accurate guidance.

There are also many advantages for towns and cities:

• Providing residents with a modern and consolidated payment method to promote inter-modality
• Boasting a system which prevents fraud
• Managing the street parking of illegally parked cars to allow residents to park when they return from work and local shops and businesses to provide their customers with parking spaces.

Digitalisation: creating a Software as a service (SaaS) platform

Parkeon has established a payment and fees management platform based on open architecture. This platform model is innovative in that it allows new services to be easily incorporated without increasing their cost. It also provides more services which are available via partnerships, without having to develop all aspects internally.

The growth in sales is, as you would expect, explained by a strong increase in profitability. Parkeon has always been able to take into account how uses evolve and, consequently, design equipment which meets the expectations of clients. For instance, Parkeon was the first to offer colour screens and touch screens.

Breakdown of the 2014 turnover

The 6% rise in turnover is broken down in a different way into the 2 group activities:

1. Smart city has recorded a turnover of 136 million euros

Over the 2014 financial year, the Smart City activity experienced strong growth in expanding its installed network of pay and display terminals for parking services: with 17,500 new machines sold, a new record was set. Parkeon is the global leader in terminals. That explains the growth in demand, especially in emerging countries.

Parkeon has therefore paved the way for expansion into countries such as Russia, Azerbaijan, Madagascar, Algeria, Bahrain and has extended the number of towns and cities covered, for instance in Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Brazil and Australia. Cities such as New York have also greatly extended their paid parking surface area coverage via Parkeon equipment.

Parkeon has also benefited from considerable orders for the modernisation of its currently installed network, especially to allow residents to pay with their debit and credit card. Many terminals have also been transformed into multi-service kiosks, especially in Western Europe and the US. More than 110,000 kiosks are now connected to Parkeon servers, which process more than 170 million transactions from start to finish by debit and credit card throughout the world.

Parkeon has established a strong know-how in back-office solutions in the field of fee, identifier and related payment management. Initially developed for parking management, this back-office platform, whether or not it is related to our equipment, provides genuine opportunities to branch out to other services.

On this basis, the group has developed a gas cylinder distribution service which is available 24/7. New solutions should be up and running in 2015 such as Park&Collect (infrastructure for the delivery of internet orders in the city centre), bicycle share service or even the management of charging stations for motorists.

Creation of Yellowbrick: Parkeon is developing in the digital domain at a faster pace

Besides the traditional parking payment methods, Parkeon is offering electronic payment by debit and credit card or by mobile phone. In this regard, in 2013, Parkeon created its own offer by mobile telephone (Whoosh!) in England and France.

On 30 October 2014, Parkeon joined forces with a Dutch partner called Waysis BV to create Yellowbrick International BV, based in Amsterdam. The aim of this company (of which 70% is owned by Parkeon) is to pool operations in mobile parking payments and for Parkeon to develop in the digital domain at a faster pace.

Yellowbrick has proven expertise in this field and has already recorded more than 7 million transactions in the Netherlands and Belgium. Yellowbrick International is now active in France, England, Holland, Belgium, Spain and the US. It will go live in new countries this year, especially Australia.

2. Smart transport has recorded a turnover of 58 million euros

The convergence of underlying trends such as growing urbanisation, the need to reduce CO2 emissions and the development of smarter solutions for mobility underpin the strong growth of the public transport ticketing market. By tackling the issues of this market head-on, Parkeon is ideally placed to see further growth.

This activity is progressing in stages, according to significant contracts that are being signed: Parkeon actually delivers complex and turnkey contracts. These contracts cover the supply of ticketing, validation and inspection equipment, as well as any related software.

Over the 2014 financial year, the Smart transport activity remained steady in terms of volume as, during the year, emphasis was placed on completing the delivery of significant projects signed in 2012 and 2013 in Helsinki and Algeria.

2015 will be a year of strong growth in view of the fact that a number of new contracts have been concluded in the UK for buses (London) and train lines, as well as in Belgium (Brussels), Algeria, Australia and New York.

Big data management

The service management platforms have become more modular, more flexible and now handle billions of data captured every second throughout the world on our connected equipment.

Incorporated to and compared with historical records, these data represent a considerable source of invaluable information which make it possible to assess trends and make predictions about parking space availability in towns and cities (Path-to-Park application under Ios and Android), road traffic or peaks in public transport (machine learning of the multi-modal remote ticketing solutions).

Innovation and development

Far beyond the mere supply of products, the development strategy implemented since 2011 consists of Parkeon offering¬ ongoing support to local authorities which face challenges related to journeys in urban areas. The configuration of towns and cities and their infrastructure means that their representatives are faced with a whole range of issues.

The flexibility of Parkeon’s offer means that a personalised response can be provided to them so that solutions promoting greater flexibility in urban journeys can be offered while guaranteeing ease of access to services for end users.
Being a partner involves requirements especially in terms of innovation and development. An involvement which is materialised in the form of:

• more than 8% of turnover invested in research and development every year
• more than 20 patents are filed on average every year
• 300 technicians spread out between Paris, Besançon, Holland and England

According to Bertrand Barthelemy, the Chairman of Parkeon: “2014 was a financial year in which we consolidated our growth. Parkeon has seen an increase in its sales and its income. This is the result of the successful implementation by all colleagues of Parkeon of the digitalisation plan of our offer, the change in our economic model and our processes. We allow towns and cities to carry through smart city projects and ease the mobility of their residents and make it more environmentally-friendly. I am delighted to announce that this profitable growth will increase at a faster rate in 2015 for the fourth consecutive financial year.”

2015 targets: Continued profitable growth

The 2015 financial year should be characterised:

• by a continued expansion of the connected installed network of payment terminals
• by strong growth in smart transport in English-speaking countries (Australia and England)
• by the deployment of new Smart City offers
• by faster growth in the back-office platform SaaS
• by continued development in the digital domain with the deployment of the payment applications Whoosh!, Yellowbrick and the Path-to-Park guidance application across several continents

That is why the group is revising its targets up for 2015:

• more than 10% growth in turnover
• 30% improvement in EBITDA

About Parkeon

Parkeon is a key player in the sector of urban mobility. By providing a single offer encompassing parking management solutions and ticketing solutions for public transport, Parkeon is now present in 60 countries and is accelerating its growth in emerging markets such as Eastern Europe, Russia, Asia, Latin America and North Africa. Parkeon’s capacity for continuous innovation is demonstrated every day. Systems and equipment provided by Parkeon facilitate management and mobility in more than 4,000 cities. Parkeon employs over 1,000 employees worldwide and achieved a turnover of $196 million in 2014.