Consolidated sales amounting to 7.1 Billion Won ($ 5.78 mn,+42% YoY), returning to operating profit and net profit by a large margin (YoY) Expecting CloudMOA-oriented cloud business to keep up its growth in the post COVID-19 era AI and big data business are expected to grow robustly this year due to favorable trends based on the 'Korean New Deal' policy.

EXEM Co.(CEO Jongarm Cho, [KOSDAQ:205100], www.ex-em.com/en/) specializing in database & application performance monitoring, artificial intelligence and big data has recorded best first quarter result ever, brightening its business outlook.

EXEM posted, on the 14th, the consolidated financial results of Q1 2020 reporting 7.1 billion won($ 5.78 mn), recording a 42% increase from the same quarter of last year. EXEM succeeded in turning into operating profit and net profit by a large margin. The operating profit was 600 million won($ 0.49 mn) and net profit was 1.2 billion won($ 0.98 mn), compared with 1.4 billion won($ 1.14 mn) in operating losses and 1.1 billion won($ 0.9 mn) in net losses in the first quarter of 2019. On a separate basis, EXEM's sales rose 42% on-year to 5.3 billion won($ 4.31 mn), operating profit rose 1 billion won($ 0.81 mn) and net profit stood at 1.7 billion won($ 1.38 mn), successfully turning into surplus compared to the previous year, while its operating profit ratio stood at 19.7%, net profit margin 32.3%, showing high profitability. EXEM's first quarter performance is the result of improved sales and sustained growth in all areas of its business compared to the previous year, EXEM's officials explained. In particular, the sales of 'MaxGauge', which supports the most diverse DBMS types in Korea and holds the No. 1 market share in the database performance management (DBPM) market for over 20 years, increased 53.2% YoY and maintained steady growth. In APM (Application Performance Monitoring) section, the sales of 'InterMax', the E2E (End-to-end) transaction tracing solution that leads the market, also increased by 24.8%, contributing to the company's overall profit growth.

EXEM's officials said, "The first quarter is traditionally the off-season for IT market, and despite the global economic downturn affected by COVID-19, we achieved best first quarter sales ever. In the post COVID-19 era, represented by the cloud paradigm, EXEM is expected to grow solidly this year because of the growth prospects of more competitive current business areas, the product technology level that overwhelms competitors, and the situation where the impact of COVID-19 is not significant.” In addition, EXEM’s officials explained that EXEM has gained momentum to grow its business including Cloud, AI and Big data as the government recently announced a plan to promote the 21st-century "Korean New Deal" to prepare for the post COVID-19 era, in which the key tasks like △ Strengthen the cloud △ Spread artificial intelligence (AI) convergence across all industries △ Expand collection and utilization of big data △ Expand AI data and infrastructure are included. In particular, the situation in which more and more companies are accelerating their cloud transition due to the COVID-19 crisis has revealed a green light for the growth of the cloud-native business, which has been especially strengthened by the cloud native architecture integrated management solution 'CloudMOA' developed by EXEM. Recently, ‘CloudMOA’ has been well received by domestic leading cloud service providers, distribution companies, and game companies, and it has received positive attention from the market, following solution's introduction and demonstration inquiries. 'CloudMOA' provides an all-in-one integrated management service for large-scale IT infrastructure and services in a cloud environment to companies that transform their IT environment into hybrid cloud or multi-cloud. In addition, it provides user-friendly monitoring function that notifies of anomaly detection using AI and 2D / 3D (two / three-dimensional) dashboard environment that abstracts the layered cloud environment and problems by text alarm, improving and maximizing IT operation efficiency of enterprise customers in the cloud environment.

Moreover, EXEM is actively preparing a cloud omnidirectional business development system while targeting the demand for cloud native markets with the following plans and strategies: △ Develop and continuously advance new functions centered on users △ Recruit talented cloud consultants △ Contract with domestic and global leading MSP(Managed Service Providers) and CSP(Cloud Service Providers) to reinforce partner collaboration system △ Free promotion event for cloud-building clients △ Provide one-stop cloud infrastructure innovation service based on technology integration alliance through 'INSLab', a strategic investment company (Kubernetes-based managed container service), 'insignary', a business joint promotion company (fingerprint-based compliance security) and 'SINSIWAY', our subsidiary company (approach control). In particular, EXEM's strategic investment company 'INSLab' has been recently selected as the official supplier of 'Cloud Service Application Expansion Project' in 2020, hosted by National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA). It is expected that the EXEM cloud alliance-based cloud-native business will achieve significant growth this year, in line with the government's implementation of the “Korean New Deal” policy such as strengthening the cloud.

EXEM's self-developed Korea's first AI-based IT operation intelligence solution 'XAIOps' shows AIOPs technology maturity comparable to global leading solutions, and a number of PoC has been run by many companies including the first financial sector and large retailers, with successful implementation and visible results ahead. 'XAIOps' is a new solution that combines AI with accumulated technology and know-how of 'MaxGauge', the No. 1 solution in the domestic DBPM market, and 'InterMax', the leading E2E transaction tracing solution in the APM market. It provides AI-based integrated failure prediction, anomaly detection, and root cause analysis for IT systems. EXEM is also expected to achieve remarkable growth in the big data business, as the participation of Korea Electric Power Corporation's big data platform performance reinforcement business and domestic leading fashion companies' big data analysis business, and numerous business orders and contracts related to big data have been made and more results are expected to be visible this year. In particular, EXEM is expected to seize more business opportunities in the public energy big data sector, which is considered to be a major foundation for the growth of the energy industry in the future through the performance enhancement project of KEPCO's big data platform. In addition, EXEM expands its big data analysis business by combining differentiated consulting services that utilize EXEM's business experience and globally proven solutions of 'DataRobot' and 'KNIME', which have signed a partner contract with EXEM. The next plan is to expand the big data analysis business and continue to make progress in the domestic market. 'DataRobot' and 'KNIME' were selected as “Visionary” companies in Gartner’s 2020 magic quadrant for data science and machine-learning platforms, both of which have a number of global leading customers and lead the global data analytics market.

Meanwhile, EXEM is accelerating its growth through its core technology and sales competitiveness, which are ready to respond rapidly to market trends in existing business areas and overwhelm competitors. 'MaxGauge' is securing the position of absolute strength in the domestic DB performance management market with its strengths, such as precise analysis through data collection and AI-based auto-diagnosis, in real time (0.01 second). With the spread of 'Move Away from Oracle', open source DBMS and the cloud paradigm, EXEM diversifies its lineup of MaxGauge, which supports 9 DBMS including Oracle DBMS, and completes the technical verification to provide monitoring service in a cloud environment. EXEM also revealed its will to widen the gap with the existing competitors and maintain a competitive edge. In particular, 'MaxGauge' cloud-oriented products have received high interest in the Japanese market, where demand for IT performance management continues to increase due to a shortage of engineers. Recently "MaxGauge' cloud-oriented product was supplied to “Takagi” in Japan. 'InterMax' focuses on the integrated performance management of all sections including WEB-WAS-TP-DB (End-to-end) and is based on the largest stable operation experience in the domestic APM market and proven technology as the No. 1 solution in various performance tests. More than 200% sales growth over the past three years is expected to lead to a higher growth rate this year.

“At the time of 'post COVID-19', EXEM has a solid business portfolio that will keep a sustainable growth regardless of any crisis,” said Jongarm Cho, CEO of EXEM. “This year, along with DBPM and APM solutions armed with new technologies and competitiveness in cloud native, AIOps and big data market, we will preoccupy the opportunity to come after COVID-19 and achieve a quantum jump.”


▲ EXEM Q1 2020 Consolidated Financial Report Summary

▲ Solutions and Service Map of EXEM
EXEM introduction is available for download here: https://www.ex-em.com/resources/en/pds/EXEM%20Introduction_v1.0_ENG.pdf