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Proactiveinvestors United Kingdom Lo-Q http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk Proactiveinvestors United Kingdom Lo-Q RSS feed en Wed, 23 May 2012 06:00:38 +0100 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Genera CMS action@proactiveinvestors.com (Proactiveinvestors) action@proactiveinvestors.com (Proactiveinvestors) <![CDATA[RNS press release - Holding(s) in Company ]]> http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/rns/120517loq6014d/ Thu, 17 May 2012 15:19:00 +0100 http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/rns/120517loq6014d/ <![CDATA[News - LO-Q reports bright start for Q-band at new water parks ]]> http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/news/42727/lo-q-reports-bright-start-for-q-band-at-new-water-parks-42727.html  

Lo-Q's (LON:LOQ)  new water park product Q-band has made a bright start in the first two US water parks to roll-out the technology this season, the virtual queuing specialist said today.

In total, eleven new water parks are scheduled to start using Q-band this year, after very strong demand for the product from operators. Three different water park operators signed to take Q-band over the past six months. 

Lo-Q said Q-band went live in the two new parks in the first weekend in May and both sites received encouraging early user numbers and good inital user feedback. 

Q-band, which uses RFID technology, is waterproof and worn on the wrist like a watch. 

Users can reserve a time to use a park's most popular slides, which Lo-Q says cuts they time they have to queue and allows them more time to enjoy the park.

Tom Burnet, Lo-Q’s chief executive said:  "I am delighted with the excellent visitor reaction to Q-band at our first two roll-outs of the year.

This is a really encouraging start to our Q-band operations, and we are now increasingly excited about the next nine roll-outs on the horizon: each of which remains on track to launch in the coming weeks." 

Lo-Q's customers including Parques Reunidos, Six Flags, Dollywood and Merlin Entertainments. 

 

]]> Mon, 14 May 2012 08:08:00 +0100 http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/news/42727/lo-q-reports-bright-start-for-q-band-at-new-water-parks-42727.html <![CDATA[RNS press release - Q-band Water Park Progress ]]> http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/rns/120514loq2214d/ Mon, 14 May 2012 07:01:00 +0100 http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/rns/120514loq2214d/ <![CDATA[News - Tom Burnet, CEO of Lo-Q, talks about monetising queues and a transformational product for water park ]]> http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/news/42380/tom-burnet-ceo-of-lo-q-talks-about-monetising-queues-and-a-transformational-product-for-water-park-42380.html Harry Norman from Proactive Investors talks with Tom Burnet, CEO of Lo-Q, listed on the Aim Market software sector, stock ticker LON:LOQ, share price 227.5 pence, market capitalisation 47.9 million pounds sterling. Web address www.Lo-Q.com.  

 

Harry Norman: Tom thank you very much for joining us for this interview.

Tom Burnet: Pleasure.

Harry Norman: What does Lo-Q do as a company and how did Lo-Q win a Queen’s Award for International Trade?

Tom Burnet: Lo-Q allows guests at theme parks and water parks to virtually queue rather than really queue.  Our flagship product is the q-bot; guests rent the q-bot which allows them to scroll through a list of rides available in the park that they happen to be in and to virtually join the back of a queue line for any ride that they want to in the park.  As the time lapses that they would have spent in a normal queue, they can go and spend the time as they choose, whether they’re having lunch or going and riding a less popular ride and when it’s their turn to ride the queue or when they would have reached the front if they had have joined the real queue line, the machine beeps at them and summons them to a separate entrance to the ride, the rollercoaster whatever it might be, which they walk straight on to and ride. The Queen’s Award is a huge feather in the cap for the team here and I’m delighted that Leonard Sim, our founder should have been the chap who was able to receive it. We won our Queen’s Award for International Trade, clearly there are lots of theme parks overseas and 90% of our business is conducted in North America.  And it’s a super endorsement of the team at Lo-Q and indeed for our park operator customers who I know are proud on our behalf.

Harry Norman: Please will you talk us through the details of progress of sales to revenue sharing operators in your first year or so as CEO.

Tom Burnett: Well one of the things I really concentrated on since I arrive at Lo-Q is increasing the levels of sales activity in the business and I’ve been delighted to see the progress that we’ve made.  I think since I’ve arrived, I’m just working it out, we’ve sold 16 new bits of business to operators across Europe and North America and really this is just about increasing energy and activity levels I think.  We’ve got a good brand and a good reputation in the vertical in which we operate leisure and attractions, we’ve put a lot of time and energy in at trade shows around the world and I’m delighted to see that the energy we’ve been putting into that work is beginning to pay off.

Harry Norman: What revenue related trends are showing up with Lo-Q’s technologies that are hired out by operators to their customers?

Tom Burnett: Well there’s two key KPI’s that we think about at Lo-Q.  The first one is how much are our guests spending, we’re delighted that to the year we’ve just reported we’ve seen guest spend increase by something in the region of 17%.  Now some of that we can put down to just an annual price rise, some of it is about our consumers, particularly in North America feeling a little richer and being prepared to spend a little bit more on their day out in parks and the rest of it’s about us just selling better, engaging with customers better, both online and when we greet them at the park.  The other really satisfying statistic this year is the number of Lo-Q quests has increased by 9% and the analogy I use here is, it’s like flying in business class as apposed to sitting in economy, once you’ve used our product it’s very difficult to imagine not using it again and clearly therefore every year as guests come back and back and back to the parks we have a broader community of guests who’s used our products before who have a higher propensity to buy from us again.

Harry Norman: Please talk us through the technologies that operators actually hire and handle.  You’ve spoken about the q-bot but there’s also the q-band and the q-smart, please can you tell us about the progress with developing your technologies.

Tom Burnett: Well q-bot as you say I’ve already talked about is our proprietary theme park product and q-band is our new product for water parks, which we successfully trialled ** [03.39] in Georgia, North America last summer and the response to that had been really terrific both from park operators and from their guests.  To the extent that we’ve now sold to 11 parks for the operating for the summer 2012 season and hopefully we’ll have more in due course.  The other really exciting thing for us is we have announced to trial with a major attraction where customers are going to be able to use their smart phones to buy and receive a ticket to the attraction and then turn up at the attraction at an appropriate time and to enter the attraction without standing in the queue line and we feel that’s got an enormous potential market for us around the world.

Harry Norman: Patents and IP have always been important to Lo-Q, what can you tell us about the company’s patent and IP activities over the last year or so?

Tom Burnett: Patents absolutely sit at the heart of Lo-Q and in the last year we’ve spent time and energy both to initiate our own new patents, to extend patents that we already own and indeed to buy patents that have come available in the market or indeed we have sought out patents that we think compliment and support our current patent portfolio and made arrangements with their owners to purchase them from them.  In terms of IP in the round however, our IP really extends beyond just our patents and into our understanding of how our industry works.  The 8 and a half million or so guests that we’ve worked with over the last few years in parks have given us a really very substantial understanding of how theme parks and water parks operate, which also is a very important part of who we are and why we’re unique in the market.

Harry Norman: One of your goals last year was to improve the company’s governance and strengthen your team, what steps have been taken and how will this benefit the company Tom?

Tom Burnett: Well I think strong governance is at the heart of every important company, and certainly every serious company.  It’s been my pleasure to be able to make a range of changes in Lo-Q over my first year and that’s really from the board down.  We’ve installed a new Chairman in John Weston and a new Non-Executive Director in David Gammon both of whom bring huge experience to our board.  We’ve restructured our business to reflect the lines of business we’re now pursuing around the products we’ve established as our priority, we’ve reviewed and changed in many cases all of our professional advisors around the business and I think all of these things are about giving ourselves, our customers and our shareholders confidence that we are an appropriately run and serious organisation.  I think that all our investors, but particularly our institutional investors are extremely keen that we should be able to demonstrate rock solid foundations on which to grow and I think the benefit that we’ve seen is in the growing institutional stake in our business.

Harry Norman: Please talk us through the highlights of Lo-Q’s annual results for the year ending 31st of October 2011 which were recently published and tell us about the company’s capital structure and financial situation going forward.

Tom Burnett: Well we’ve been very pleased to be able to report some strong results, our revenue’s are up just over 20%, our profit before tax just around 17.5% and our net cash is up 25% at 7 and a half million at the end of October.  We remain with no debt, currently we have something in the order of just over 17 million shares in issue and we’ve seen substantial change in shareholder ownership over the last 12 months to the extent that I think when I joined we had 1 institutional shareholder with a 3% holding in our business and we now have a number of very substantial institutional shareholders including M & G, Blackrock and Standard Life, just to name but three and nearly a 50% intuitional ownership in Lo-Q.

Harry Norman: What can we expect from Lo-Q over the next 12 to 18 months Tom?

Tom Burnett: Well I hope you’ll see us capitalise on the momentum that we’ve created in the last 12 to 15 months, I’m certainly going to be expecting to be able to report more sales and particularly I think to water parks around the world and to single line attractions with our smart phone technology.  I hope to be able to report activity in new geographies, right now we don’t have anything substantial in Asia for example or at least only one park in Australia and I’d very much like to see us participate in that growing market.  I hope to be able to announce activity with new operators, so we’re talking to new operators, theme park operators around the world and with luck we’ll be able to convert that into new business and perhaps the most exciting news for the future, I’d like us to be starting to look outside our core markets and to be going to find cash rich and time poor consumers and hopefully offering them a much better experience then they are currently able to find anywhere else.

 

]]> Fri, 04 May 2012 11:56:00 +0100 http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/news/42380/tom-burnet-ceo-of-lo-q-talks-about-monetising-queues-and-a-transformational-product-for-water-park-42380.html <![CDATA[RNS press release - Director/PDMR Shareholding ]]> http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/rns/120425loq0730c/ Wed, 25 Apr 2012 16:04:00 +0100 http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/rns/120425loq0730c/ <![CDATA[RNS press release - Director/PDMR Shareholding ]]> http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/rns/120420loq7430b/ Fri, 20 Apr 2012 09:01:00 +0100 http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/rns/120420loq7430b/ <![CDATA[RNS press release - Director/PDMR Shareholding ]]> http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/rns/120413loq3155b/ Fri, 13 Apr 2012 13:46:00 +0100 http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/rns/120413loq3155b/ <![CDATA[RNS press release - Exercise of Options ]]> http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/rns/120411loq0752b/ Wed, 11 Apr 2012 07:00:00 +0100 http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/rns/120411loq0752b/ <![CDATA[Broker press ]]> Thu, 29 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0100 <![CDATA[News - Lo-Q shares extend gains, Edison sees strong growth ahead ]]> http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/news/40852/lo-q-shares-extend-gains-edison-sees-strong-growth-ahead--40852.html Shares in virtual queuing specialist Lo-Q (LON:LOQ) extended gains today, following rises after an upbeat AGM statement yesterday.

By 3.12 pm, the stock was trading at 317.50 pence, up 4.3 per cent on the day. The group’s valuation has doubled since the same time last year.

Edison Investment Research put out a note today, saying that while the shares look pricey in traditional price/earnings ratio terms, there is plenty of momentum in the business, which is set to drive growth over the next few years.

Lo-Q is currently trading at 22 times earnings as forecast by Edison for the current year, expected to dip to 20 times FY2013 forecast earnings.

The group told shareholders yesterday that it has made an encouraging start to the new trading year.

Lo-Q said that while it is still very early in the trading year for the majority of its theme and water park customers, a healthy sales pipeline and encouraging early trading made it confident of hitting market expectations.

The company had a strong year to October 2011 with profits rising by 17 per cent to £2.7 million and Six Flags, its main customer, signing a six-year contract extension for its core product, the Q-bot.

Six Flags also agreed to put Lo-Q’s new water park product, the Q-band, into nine of its water parks.

Other major theme park customers include Parques Reunidos, Herschend Group and Merlin Entertainments.

The group added that its performance is traditionally significantly second-half weighted and this weighting will increase this year due to the investments made in supporting new products and new customer installations.

Edison analyst Richard Jeans is expecting revenues of £30.4 million and pre-tax profits of £3.3 million in the current full year and £34.1 million/£3.7 million next year.

“Our forecasts apply conservative assumptions to the existing and new business wins and there are several drivers for upgrades, including increased penetration rates, firmer pricing and new business potential in the existing target markets,” he said.

“Further, there is an opportunity to widen the group’s virtual-queuing IP into adjacent markets and the benefits from smart phone apps and cashless payments through the deal with MasterCard are yet to show through,” Jeans added.

]]> Wed, 28 Mar 2012 15:14:00 +0100 http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/news/40852/lo-q-shares-extend-gains-edison-sees-strong-growth-ahead--40852.html <![CDATA[News - Lo-Q in the fast lane as new products come on stream ]]> http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/news/40835/lo-q-in-the-fast-lane-as-new-products-come-on-stream--40835.html For nearly a decade, Lo-Q shares struggled, but now they stand at an all-time high and recently were reclassified in the high-flying software sector.

]]> Wed, 28 Mar 2012 09:20:00 +0100 http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/news/40835/lo-q-in-the-fast-lane-as-new-products-come-on-stream--40835.html <![CDATA[RNS press release - Result of AGM ]]> http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/rns/120327loq2030a/ Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:35:00 +0100 http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/rns/120327loq2030a/ <![CDATA[News - Lo-Q upbeat after encouraging start to 2012 ]]> http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/news/40770/lo-q-upbeat-after-encouraging-start-to-2012-40770.html  

Virtual queuing specialist Lo-Q (LON:LOQ) has made an encouraging start to the new trading year, it told shareholders at its annual meeting today.

Lo-Q said that while it is still very early in the trading year for the majority of its theme and water park customers, a healthy sales pipeline and encouraging early trading made it confident of hitting market expectations.

The company had a strong year to October 2011 with profits rising by 17 per cent to £2.7 million and Six Flags, its main customer, signing a six-year contract extension for its core product, the Q-bot.

Six Flags also agreed to put Lo-Q’s new water park product, the Q-band, into nine of its water parks.

Other major theme park customers include Parques Reunidos, Herschend Group and Merlin Entertainments.

“Having secured strong new business momentum, the main challenge for Lo-Q in this first half has been to ensure the efficient implementation and installation of each new customer mandate.  

"The board is pleased with the progress that the company's service teams have made in this regard ahead of the important peak park trading season,” it said.

The group added that its performance is traditionally significantly second-half weighted and this weighting will increase this year due to the investments made in supporting new products and new customer installations.  

Lo-Q shares have almost doubled over the past twelve months to stand at 295 pence. 

 

]]> Tue, 27 Mar 2012 07:51:00 +0100 http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/news/40770/lo-q-upbeat-after-encouraging-start-to-2012-40770.html <![CDATA[RNS press release - AGM Statement ]]> http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/rns/120327loq1148a/ Tue, 27 Mar 2012 07:00:00 +0100 http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/rns/120327loq1148a/ <![CDATA[Media files - Lo-Q’s – improved performance and enormous potential ]]> http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/stocktube/1061/lo-qs-improved-performance-and-enormous-potential-1061.html Lo-Q, talks about 16 contracts signed, an award for growth overseas, 17% increase in average customer spend, 9% increase in park attendees utilising Lo-Q systems, terrific response to a new water park device, & a new smartphone application with an enormous potential market (March 2012) ]]> Wed, 14 Mar 2012 18:00:00 +0000 http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/stocktube/1061/lo-qs-improved-performance-and-enormous-potential-1061.html <![CDATA[News - Lo-Q signs up eleventh US water park for new queuing system ]]> http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/news/39658/lo-q-signs-up-eleventh-us-water-park-for-new-queuing-system-39658.html Lo-Q (LON:LOQ) has signed up another US water theme park for its Q-band virtual queuing system.

Zoombezi Bay, owned and run by the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, is a new customer for Lo-Q and has signed a five-year agreement for Q-band.

Visitors renting the RFID-enabled wristband can reserve a "virtual" place in line at a park's most popular slides using kiosks located throughout the park. 

When their reservation time arrives, guests enter via a separate entrance and have their band scanned to get on the ride.

Zoombezi Bay is the eleventh US water park to sign up for Q-band since its launch last year. US theme park giant Six Flags has already agreed to install the system in nine of its water parks.

Tom Burnet, Lo-Q’s chief executive, said: “Today's news is yet another example of the enthusiastic response our recently launched water park product has received from the operator community.”

“Both large-scale groups and individual park operators such as Zoombezi Bay have been quick to realise the revenue enhancing and experience enhancing qualities of the product and its ease of use.

Zoombezi Bay’s general manager John Gannon added: “We believe our guests will greatly appreciate having the option to make ride reservations to avoid waiting in line for our exciting rides.”  

AS well as Six Flags, Lo-Q has installed its virtual queuing systems in parks run by Lo-Q's system has been adopted by leading theme park and attraction operators globally, with customers including Parques Reunidos, Herschend Group and Merlin Entertainments.

]]> Thu, 01 Mar 2012 07:37:00 +0000 http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/news/39658/lo-q-signs-up-eleventh-us-water-park-for-new-queuing-system-39658.html <![CDATA[RNS press release - United States New Contract Win ]]> http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/rns/120301loq4436y/ Thu, 01 Mar 2012 07:01:00 +0000 http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/rns/120301loq4436y/ <![CDATA[RNS press release - Holding(s) in Company ]]> http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/rns/120229loq4330y/ Wed, 29 Feb 2012 17:33:00 +0000 http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/rns/120229loq4330y/ <![CDATA[RNS press release - Director/PDMR Shareholding ]]> http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/rns/120228loq3092y/ Tue, 28 Feb 2012 16:23:00 +0000 http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/rns/120228loq3092y/ <![CDATA[RNS press release - Notice of AGM ]]> http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/rns/120224loq1143y/ Fri, 24 Feb 2012 16:00:00 +0000 http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/rns/120224loq1143y/