10th Sep 2014 09:16
LONDON (Alliance News) - Corero Network Security PLC Wednesday reported a wider loss for the fist half of the year as revenue dropped by almost a quarter, but it expressed optimism for the future as early demand for its new SmartWall product helped push sales order intake up by 9%.
The company, which makes products that protect businesses against so-called distributed denial of service attacks and other cyber threats to internet servers, reported a pretax loss of of USD5.2 million for the six months to June 30, wider than the USD4.2 million loss it reported a year earlier, as revenue dropped to USD3.7 million, from USD4.9 million.
Chief Executive Ashley Stephenson described the year as transitional for the company, and said its focus for the second half would be on winning new business with its new SmartWall product, particularly targeting the hosting, cloud and mid-tier service provider market. It will also continue developing the product.
The company said sales order intake was USD4.5 million in the first half of the year, up 9% on the comparative period in 2013. The intake included 12 customers with orders exceeding USD100,000, up from seven a year earlier, including orders for previous generation product sales and the first two SmartWall customer sales.
The SmartWall sales were to a US hosting provider and a UK government network provider. Sales of the older products included a US Wall Street financial services firm, a UK provider of business analytics and data to the financial services and real estate industries, a Spanish bank, a US on-line ticketing operator, a US airport and port operator, and a UK based international insurance provider.
"The market opportunity for DDoS and cyber threat protection remains strong, though we remain at the mercy of customer sales cycles. Encouragingly, we are seeing momentum in the pipeline of new SmartWall opportunities and customer pilots," Stephenson said in the statement.
The company said it expects revenue in the second half to be bigger than in the first half thanks to SmartWall sales opportunities.
"In view of the early market feedback on the SmartWall offering, the board remains optimistic in the outlook for Corero," Stephenson added.
Corero had cash of USD5.4 million on June 30, up slightly from USD5.3 million a year earlier, while it swung to a net cash position of USD5.0 million compared with net debt of USD2.8 million.
Corero Network Security shares were up 0.9% at 22.20 pence Wednesday morning.
By Steve McGrath; [email protected]; @stevemcgrath1
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