5 Questions with Kyle Hall of PNI Digital (TSXV:PN)

Vancouver’s PNI Digital Media (TSXV:PN), which was once known as PhotoChannel, has an international reach. The Company’s PNI Digital Media Platform reaches clients through retail giants such as Walmart, Costco, SAM’s Club, CVS/pharmacy, Tesco, Kodak, ASDA, K-Mart Australia, and Hallmark UK. The Company’s kiosks are a hit for their ease of use. PNI’s footprint is so large, in fact, that one of the features of its new new iPhone app locates the nearest eligible retail location for users who might want to instantly print off a photo they just snapped with their iPhone.

Cantech Letter talked to Kyle Hall, PNI Digital’s CEO.

Tell us a bit about your business. How do you make money?

PNI develops and markets the PNI Digital Media Platform, which enables the world’s largest retailers to offer personalized products such as photo prints, photo books, photo calendars, posters, canvas art, greeting cards, photo cards and business stationery, all via propriety online, kiosk and mobile software. In return for creating and routing these orders, PNI Digital Media earns a transaction fee. Since 2005, our business has grown more than 1100%.

Is your space growing? How are you positioned to benefit?

There has been significant growth in the digital photo market place. That growth has been built on the explosion of digital cameras and other devices such as camera-enabled smart phones, which has enabled consumers to capture, share and then print their memories at any of our 14,000 retailer-partner locations. Beyond the historic growth in simple prints, we are beginning to see more and more orders over our platform for the higher-value creative photo gift products such as photo books and photo calendars. PNI is positioned to benefit as we enable the retailer to offer these products both online, and also via in-store kiosks and even mobile devices such as an iPhone. Where ever consumers are, they can create and submit an order for printing, pick their preferred retail location, and in most cases that order will be ready in as little as one hour.

What is the most most common misconception about your company or its business?

PNI doesn’t do any printing itself. We enable retailers to offer personalized, on-demand products which are of high value to the consumer. Our software platform is connected to work with an array of fulfillment partners who offer the actual production services.

What’s your financial situation like?

For our last full fiscal year, PNI Digital Media had revenue of $25.4M, produced $7.4M in adjusted EBITDA, delivered $2.0M GAAP earnings before income taxes and had an EPS of $0.20. We have no long term debt.

What is your key competitive advantage?

We have strong relationships with our key clients and we have invested significantly in innovation to grow both the volume and type of transactions over our platform. We are currently spring-boarding into two markets that are 3x and 4x the size of our current large market, leveraging our platform and the good relationships with our partners, with the intent to deliver future growth for both our clients and our company.

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