20th Feb 2008 07:01
Synchronica PLC20 February 2008 20 February 2008 Synchronica PLC ('Synchronica' or the 'Company') Placing of 28.5 million new ordinary shares to raise £2.0million Synchronica (AIM: SYNC) is pleased to announce that it has raised £2.0 million, before expenses, via a placing of 28,571,429 new ordinary shares of 1p each ("Placing Shares") at a price of 7p per share ("Placing Price") with private and institutional investors (the "Placing"). The funds raised will be used for working capital and in particular to expand Synchronica's sales and marketing capabilities in emerging markets in order to capitalize on the outstanding opportunity presented by fundamental changes in the capabilities of mobile telephony. The Placing expands the Company's investor base, as two institutions new to Synchronica have invested. Additionally, management has further demonstrated its commitment to the Synchronica story by deepening its investment in the Company. Carsten Brinkschulte, Synchronica's CEO, has subscribed for 285,714 shares as part of the Placing, bringing his personal holding to 762,136 shares, representing 0.52 % of the issued share capital on admission of the Placing Shares. This is on top of recent share purchases by Directors in January. Commenting on the placing, Mr Brinkschulte said: "The new funds will enable Synchronica to take advantage of the exceptional opportunities for our products, especially in the emerging markets. In these countries, mobile phones are becoming powerful tools for economic development. They are changing from simple devices that just make calls to more useful tools that can give access to the Internet and key services, such as email, to millions of people. Synchronica's Mobile Gateway 3.5 software is geared to the specific requirements of emerging markets and can deliver email to over 3 billion phones worldwide. It has the capacity to improve lives around the world as it will help people to connect and develop their businesses." Use of Proceeds The funds raised from the Placing will be used to: • provide working capital; • strengthen the balance sheet to demonstrate financial stability and ability to execute to operators, device manufacturers and OEM partners; • expand Synchronica's sales function to better handle the strong pipeline of potential customers and to secure additional orders; • invest in product development to further improve the Company's competitive position; • increase numbers of support and pre-sales staff to better serve customers and OEM partners; and • continue the successful and cost-effective marketing strategy in order to generate additional prospects. Update on trading Synchronica had a very successful GSMA Mobile World Congress exhibition,generating significant interest for its products from both potential OEMpartners and network providers. The Company expects some of this interest toconvert in to solid orders and is in active discussions regarding a number ofimportant opportunities. Synchronica recently signed an important globaldistribution deal with Brightstar, a global leader in distribution and supplychain solutions for the mobile industry, for the distribution of itsaward-winning mobile push email and synchronization technology, Mobile Gateway. Synchronica will provide further information on customer wins in due course andis pleased to announce that trading for the year ended December 2007 was in linewith market expectations. The Company will, subject to audit, report revenue of£2.1million for the year ended December 2007, double that for 2006, and a muchreduced loss before tax of £3million for 2007, down from a loss before tax of£5.7million in 2006. Following the Placing the Directors believe that theCompany has sufficient cash to meet its present needs. Results for the year areexpected to be announced in early May 2008. The Placing Shares are expected to commence trading on 25 February 2008. The total number of shares in issue and therefore the total number of voting rights upon admission of the 28,571,429 Placing Shares will be 145,592,481 ordinary shares. Enquiries: Synchronica plc Carsten Brinkschulte, CEO, Angus Dent, +44 (0) 7977256 406 CFO, Nicole Meissner, CMO +44 (0) 7977256 347 +44 (0) 7977256 412 CorfinCommunications Neil Thapar, William Cullum, Alexis Gore +44 (0) 207 977 0020 Seymour Pierce David Newton, Parimal Kumar +44 (0) 207107 8000 About Mobile Gateway Synchronica's Mobile Gateway provides carrier-grade push email andsynchronization services for virtually all mass market feature phones andsmartphones being used by subscribers today. Based on the dominant open industrystandards Push IMAP (LEMONADE) for mobile email and SyncML (OMA DS) for contactand calendar synchronization, it works with the built-in Email andsynchronization clients found in more than 1.5 billion phones. The new Email toSMS functionality expands its reach to virtually every phone in use today.Serving consumers and prosumers, Mobile Gateway includes back-end support forPOP3 and IMAP mailboxes, connecting to popular services such as AOL or GoogleMail. For business users, it provides a unique zero footprint architecture whereusers simply register their devices and instantly start to receive corporateemail on their phone without requiring additional connectors behind thefirewall. Business mailboxes supported include Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Dominoand Sun Communications Suite. About Mobile Backup Synchronica's Mobile Backup solution includes support for SyncML (OMA DS) forbacking up and restoring contact and calendar data on the majority of mobilephones in the market today. It also features an automatic provisioning module(OMA CP) that enables remote, over-the-air automated setup of the service forsubscribers. About Synchronica Synchronica plc develops and markets industry standard mobile email andsynchronization solutions for the vast majority of devices in the market today.Mobile operators, device manufacturers and service providers in emerging anddeveloped markets use Synchronica products to offer mobile email, PIMsynchronization and backup & restore services to their consumer and corporatecustomer base. Products include the push email and synchronization solutionMobile Gateway and the mass-market device backup solution Mobile Backup.Headquartered in the UK with a development centre in Germany and a presence inHong Kong, Dubai and U.S. Synchronica plc is a public company traded on the AIMlist of the London Stock Exchange (SYNC.LN). More information is available atwww.synchronica.com. This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock ExchangeRelated Shares:
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