21st Mar 2014 08:59
LONDON (Alliance News) - Cloud-based software and communications business Synety Group PLC Friday said its losses widened in 2013, due to investments, despite a huge uptick in revenue driven by an increase in the number of end users of its CloudCall software and the number of licenses.
Synety also announced a discounted share placing and open offer of shares to raise GBP5.0 million for the expansion of its UK operations and entry into the US market.
The placing and offer were priced at 250 pence per share, and Synety shares responded by dropping 7.2% in early trading Friday to 290.10 pence per share, having touched 275.00 pence at the open.
2013 was the first full year of trading as Synety, following the reverse take-over of Zenergy in September 2012.
For the year ended December 31, 2013, the group reported revenues of GBP547,000, compared with only GBP76,000 a year earlier.
However, the group said its losses widened significantly during the year, reporting a pretax loss of GBP3.7 million, compared with only GBP1.3 million in 2012, due to ongoing investment to strengthen and grow the business.
During the year, the group booked a non-recurring exceptional charge of GBP710,000, associated with the fair value of deferred contingent consideration.
In 2013, the group obtained its US telecommunications licence and has now started limited activity in the US, although it said it already has a number of customers using its CloudCall software, and intend to open a sales office in Boston later this year.
"Many of these partners are US-based companies with home customer bases many times larger than their UK customer bases. Since all work on integration is already completed, launching in the US will immediately and substantially increase our addressable market," the company said in a statement.
The cloud-based telephony company said the new financial year has started well.
Synety said the number of end users rose to 2,678 in 2013 from only 564 in 2012, and said it has seen growth of a further 33% since the start of the current financial year, the two months to February 28. It said the number of licences in 2013 increased to 5,160, up from 794 a year earlier, and have since increased a further 40% since the start of 2014.
Synety held cash of GBP2.3 million at the end of December 31, 2013, down from GBP2.7 million a year earlier.
Synety said it has conditionally raise GBP4.5 million before expenses from the placing of 1.8 million shares with institutional investors and expected another GBP500,000 from the open offer of 200,499 shares. The placing and offer are being led by N+1 Singer.
By Rowena Harris-Doughty; [email protected]; @rharrisdoughty
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