After a hectic 18 months, following its acquisition of French IoT networking company Sigfox in April last year, Taiwan-based Unabiz has been forced into a cost-cutting drive with “several dozen” roles in Toulouse and Taipei to be axed by Christmas. The firm told partners at an event this morning (November 16) that the business has grown in terms of revenue numbers and connection volumes, and is on track to cover its operating costs by the end of 2024, and start to report profits from 2025.
A report in France-based regional news publication La Tribune, which has a direct line into the old Sigfox work council, reported that “several dozen positions will be eliminated” by Christmas, including in its home town of Toulouse. Henri Bong, chief executive at Unabiz, responded to RCR Wireless: “Revenue has been growing well at over 30 percent year-on-year for the last two years. The number of active connected objects grew from 9.3 million when we acquired Sigfox to more than 12 million today.”
He went on: “EBITDA is getting better; it is still at loss, but it is getting closer to break-even. The restructuring effort is showing good results.” Of course, it did not stop rival factions in the IoT space proclaiming the beginning of the (second) end for the troubled Sigfox technology. But Bong’s team has been furiously remodelling the whole business, and was bullish in its response to RCR Wireless. “With the new cost structure – after the sacrifice of some headcount – we expect to reach free cash flow by the end of next year, and profitability in 2025,” said Bong.
In December, Unabiz raised a Series B funding extension worth $25 million, to take its total Series B investment, initially pegged at $25 million in late 2021, to over $50 million. As written at the time, the injection of funds followed a frantic six-month restructuring period, following its acquisition of Sigfox in April, and represented both a vote of confidence in a job well-done, and a further boost for a job only half-done. Unabiz said at the time it had reduced Sigfox losses by almost two thirds, in six months from around $54m in 2021 to around $20m in 2022.
In the meantime, Unabiz has pursued major restructuring of the old Sigfox business model, to the extent it signed a series of collaboration deals with rival LoRaWAN groups through the spring and summer, including with The Things Industries and Actility, plus a parallel deal with LORIOT on MIOTY, another non-cellular LPWAN technology, and ultimately making a headline-grabbing truce with Semtech and the LoRa Alliance, as the parent and gatekeeper of the LoRa-based technology to merge the technologies at a cloud-level.
Unabiz has also consolidated its regional operator partnerships, with renewed agreements with the likes of iWire and WND, and pursued ‘convergence’ with the cellular IoT crowd, most notably by expanding a deal with long-time partner Soracom. Its marketing division has been busy promoting a number of useful supply contracts as well, for various connectivity solutions in various enterprise sectors, including with KYOCERA, KAIFA, TotalEnergies, WaterMeter Corp, Securitas Direct, and AJ Networks.
Reports on the ground in France noted Unabiz’s focus remains on IoT convergence, with a key session at its partner event looking at “increased convergence, paving the way for a more sustainable world”.
