The Insider: Meet the CEOs – 22nd February

Propell provides small-medium enterprises (SMEs) with artificial intelligence-enabled financing solutions that make it faster and easier for SMEs to access capital. Operating in a market comprising $423 billion in SME loans, the company provides SMEs with access to a suite of finance tools, including payments and lending, as well as insights into their financial health. By Q2 FY23, the company had increased its client base by 362% (2,600 customers), lending originations by 136% and average loan size by 307% compared with Q2 FY22. Propell’s five-year goal is to become the go-to finance platform for Australian SMEs, with 100,000 customers using the Propell app for all their financial needs.

Locality Planning Energy (LPE) predominantly services the Queensland energy market providing electricity, hot water, solar and battery systems to strata communities. The company considers itself a local leader in ‘embedded networks’ – a system that reduces energy bills by using a single metered point to measure electricity consumed by a multi-tenanted complex. Following LPE’s profitable FY21 and FY22, the company’s embedded network business achieved positive operating cash flow for a second consecutive quarter in Q2 FY23. As at 24th January 2023, LPE’s $40 million FY23 revenue guidance remains on-track and the company has secured a $10 million growth facility to fund capital works and acquire existing embedded operations/billing agents.