20th Mar 2019 12:41
LONDON (Alliance News) - Seeing Machines Ltd on Wednesday posted a widened interim loss on expenses and announced a placing and subscription to develop its core platform and scale up its Automotive division.
Shares in Seeing Machines were down 30% at 3.22 pence on Wednesday.
Seeing Machines, a technology company that designs monitoring systems to improve transport safety using artificial intelligence, will raise GBP27.5 million.
The money will be raised through the issue of 916.7 million shares at a price of 3 pence per share. Cenkos Securities PLC and Canaccord Genuity are joint bookrunners.
The company is also proposing an offer of new shares to raise up to GBP6.8 million through the issue of up to another 226.7 million shares.
The funds will be used, among other things, to develop Seeing Machines' core platform technology as well as for a business development in its Automotive division.
For the six months to December 31, the technology company's pretax loss came to AUD24.6 million or GBP13.2 million, compared to AUD16.7 million the year before.
This was principally a result of research and development expenses, which near-doubled to AUD20.5 million from AUD10.6 million.
This increase was largely caused by a non-cash one-off performance award of AUD7.5 million after the company awarded performance rights in respect of 63.2 million shares to key members of staff in June 2018.
Revenue was AUD14.0 million, down 4.1% from AUD14.6 million the year before.
Seeing Machines continues to expect its financial 2019 revenue will be "approximately in line with" its financial 2018 revenue of AUD30.7 million but said forecasting beyond its current year is difficult. Guidance for its financial 2020 year is therefore not expected until the announcement of its financial 2019 results.
Seeing Machines Chief Executive Ken Kroeger said: "We are continuing to benefit from global regulatory drivers that are accelerating the implementation of driver monitoring systems across all vehicle types. We have agreed several further partnership deals with leading global [original equipment manufacturers] and now have six agreements in total, including with two premium German and three US-based global automakers.
"The restructuring of our Fleet business is almost complete, and we are now focused on targeting geographic markets and industry categories that will deliver profitable business.
"We remain well placed to meet the rising demand for our technology from the global automotive sector."
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