Artilium plc

("Artilium" or the "Company")

 Artilium Forms Strategic Alliance with Pareteum Corporation to Develop, Market and Jointly Sell Disruptive Solutions Worldwide

·     Alliance to share distribution channels, products, expertise and technology worldwide

·     Strong focus on burgeoning new geographic markets such as Latin America and Asia

Artilium plc (LSE/AIM: ARTA), the AIM quoted provider of innovative telecommunication software and solutions, is pleased to announce that it has entered into a strategic partnership (the "Alliance") with Pareteum Corporation (NYSE: TEUM) ("Pareteum") to jointly pursue new and developed markets, creating accelerated growth and market penetration for both companies. The global collaboration includes development of new joint products and services, enhanced sales coverage for both companies, increased speed to market, and access to greater knowledge and resources, forming a significant competitive advantage in the fast-growing market in which they operate. The Alliance will pursue mature markets as well as high growth, underserved developing markets. This is a formal arrangement between Artilium and Pareteum, signified and strengthened by a strategic minority share exchange, further details of which are set out below (the "Share Exchange").

Artilium's ARTA® solution suite including its MVNE capability, OneApp, multi-channel contact centre and enterprise communication services, when combined with Pareteum's full MVNE capability, API platform, Home Location Registry (HLR)-as-a-Service and Internet of Things (IoT) ready connectivity solution enables Carriers, Enterprises and IoT service providers to have a complete solution from retail to network. Artilium and Pareteum's combined cloud-based product sets will continue the Artilium philosophy of connecting any device, anywhere, on any network.

Share Exchange

In conjunction with the Alliance, Artilium and Pareteum have also entered into a share exchange agreement whereby Artilium will issue 27,695,177 ordinary shares in the Company ("New Ordinary Shares") at a notional price of 11 pence each to Pareteum in exchange for Pareteum issuing 3,200,332 common shares in Pareteum ("New Common Shares") at a notional price of USD$1.26 each to Artilium. Following the Share Exchange, Artilium will be beneficially interested in approximately 19.9% of Pareteum's issued share capital and Pareteum will be beneficially interested in approximately 8.8% of Artilium's issued share capital. 

Under the terms of the Share Exchange, both the New Ordinary Shares and the New Common Shares will be subject to a 9 month lock-in period and subsequent to that both Artilium and Pareteum will be subject to orderly market provisions should they wish to dispose of any shares in the other party.

Artilium will apply for the New Ordinary Shares to be admitted to trading on AIM ("Admission") and the New Ordinary Shares will rank pari passu with the existing Ordinary Shares of the Company. Admission of the New Ordinary Shares is expected to take place on or around 20 October 2017. Following Admission the Company will have 341,283,755 Ordinary Shares in issue.  This number should be used by the shareholders of the Company as the denominator for the calculations by which they will determine if they are required to notify their interest in, or a change to their interest in, the Company under the FCA's Disclosure and Transparency Rules.

The New Common Shares in Pareteum will be issued within three days of the Share Exchange being entered into. The New Common Shares will rank parri passu with the existing Common Shares of Pareteum. 

Pareteum Corporation

Pareteum provides its patented, industry leading cloud based platform as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) to network telecom providers, both wired and wireless; businesses of all sizes; governments; the Internet of Things; Machine-to-machine; Application Programming Interface and Application-to-Person markets; representing all connected things and devices. Pareteum connects any device, anywhere, anytime, enabling its customers to track usage and generate revenues with greater time and cost efficiency. Pareteum is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and more information about the company can be found at its website www.pareteum.com.

In the year to 31 December 2016 Pareteum reported revenues of $12,855,811 and a loss before tax of $31,406,418. As at 31 December 2016 Pareteum had net liabilities of $9,364,531.

Jan-Paul Menke, Chairman of Artilium said: "Through this partnership, we expect both companies will accelerate growth and market penetration. We see developing markets such as Asia, Africa and South America as a strategic next step and plan to utilise this Alliance to jointly pursue those and additional markets across the world. With an estimated 23% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for IoT devices through to 2021, developing markets such as Asia and Africa are poised to become major drivers of growth.

"Artilium brings a substantially well-developed MVNE and retail service portfolio to the market, including in high-growth developing markets. These assets will be further leveraged as a result of Artilium and Pareteum's strategic alliance, strengthening each company's business and enabling us to jointly pursue revenue-expanding contracts with other mobile telecommunications providers worldwide."

Bart Weijermars, CEO of Artilium, commented: "As we have focused on our cloud communications, e-commerce and call centre suite of products to support our offering in the MVNE and IoT market, the strength of Pareteum's global reach enables us to bring full turnkey solutions to our telco and enterprise customers worldwide."

Hal Turner, Executive Chairman of Pareteum said: "Pareteum and Artilium are a natural fit to build a joint-solution. We are combining Pareteum's recent success in the IoT and API economy and our deep roots in the network MVNE market, with Artilium's robust retail, enterprise, ecommerce, and converged app platforms to create a winning combination."

Vic Bozzo, CEO of Pareteum, stated: "I am pleased to have the opportunity to build a joint solution with Artilium, and to combine forces to attack the markets we currently serve as well as exciting new and high-growth markets where our combined scale will support our mutual rapid growth, leveraging our respective IoT resources. I am especially excited to be building the expansion of these products and services together with the Artilium team."

IoT devices will become the largest category of connected devices in the world next year, overtaking mobile phones in number, according to the 2016 Ericsson Mobility Report. The report projects that in 2021 there will be a total of 28 billion connected devices globally, with 16 billion being IoT devices. In 2015, 400 million IoT devices were already cellular subscribers.

For further information please contact: 

About Artilium

Artilium is a demonstrated leader in the development of next generation communication technologies. Artilium's strategy focuses on supporting its customers to successfully grow their business by providing flexible, cost effective and innovative solutions.

Artilium's innovation-driven strategy empowers telecom operators around the globe to face the tremendous challenges ahead. We combine next-generation technology with traditional telecom environments to create exciting new business opportunities for our customers. This ensures that our customers are able to keep up with rapidly evolving market demands while simultaneously growing their businesses. 

ARTA® is the real-time Authentication, Authorization and Accounting (AAA) software that brings a full suite of new functionalities to telecom Operators and virtual Operators. Thanks to ARTA® value-added services portfolio, including for instance AAA of voice, text and data services, VoIP, 3G and 4G compliance, mobile payments and location-based services, our partners are more than ready to meet future customer needs.

Today, multiple renowned national and international telecommunication companies rely on Artilium to deliver voice, text and data services to about 1.5 million end users every day.

Artilium's "Pay-As-You-Grow" model allows us to scale our solutions to the exact needs of our customers. As a latest innovation, Artilium offers its product suite from the Cloud as a PAAS (Platform As A Service), yielding ARTA's scalability, flexibility and proven stability.

Artilium PLC is a publicly listed software company on the London Stock Exchange (LSE/AIM: ARTA).