7th Oct 2014 14:13
LONDON (Alliance News) - Shares in inline video advertising services company Blinkx PLC rose strongly Tuesday after the company revealed that investor Richard Griffiths had increased his stake in the company to 4.62%.
In a disclosure, the company said Griffiths' stake had risen to 18.5 million shares, from 14.0 million shares previously, giving him 4.62% of its voting rights.
That would make him the company's fifth-biggest shareholder, behind institutions like Hargreaves Lansdown, Barclays Wealth Management and TD Direct Investing, but slightly ahead of the 4.47% stake held by Autonomy founder and Blinkx Non-Executive Director Michael Lynch, according to shareholder information presented on the company's website.
Lynch is stepping down from Blinkx's board of directors at the end of 2014, but will join its advisory board.
Griffiths is a former sheep farmer in Wales who turned into a financiaer. He previously set up investment bank Evolution, and then moved on to set-up boutique investment company ORA Capital Partners.
Blinkx shares have been volatile this year, after a disparaging blog about its business appeared in January.
The blog, written by an associate professor at Harvard Business School, Benjamin Edelman, made allegations about the company's business model. Blinkx refuted the claims, and at that time noted that Edelman had "prepared a portion of this article at the request of a client that prefers not to be listed by name".
In February the article was amended to take out a key assertion. The professor had claimed that a company called Local Weather had deceptive advertising practices, pretending to be independent while actually being part of Blinkx. However, this was found to be untrue, with the real independent owner of Local Weather defending Blinkx.
Last week, the company saw its shares fall after it warned that revenue had continued to slow in its second quarter. Blinkx now expects revenue in the half year to end-September to be between USD102 million to USD104 million, lagging behind USD111.6 million a year before. It said it expects its earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortisation, acquisition charges and exceptional costs to be approximately break even.
Blinkx saw revenue slow in the latter half of its first quarter, hampered by lower demand than expected for its desktop division, compounded by the lingering effects of January's disputed blog.
Blinkx shares were up 6.5% at 33.00 pence Tuesday afternoon.
By Steve McGrath; [email protected]; @stevemcgrath1
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