PR Newswire
London, December 22
NOT FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, IN, INTO OR FROM THE UNITED STATES, JAPAN, CANADA, AUSTRALIA, THE REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA OR THE REPUBLIC OF IRELAND OR ANY OTHER JURISDICTION WHERE TO DO SO WOULD CONSTITUTE A BREACH OF THE RELEVANT SECURITIES LAWS OF SUCH JURISDICTION. 22 December 2014 MediaZest Plc ("MediaZest", the "Company" or "Group"; AIM: MDZ) Circular to Shareholders Trading update and expected Interim Results Notice of General Meeting MediaZest, the creative digital out-of-home media and innovative marketing solutions company, announced on 17 December 2014 that it had conditionally raised £438,000 (before expenses) through the placing of 125,142,900 new Ordinary Shares with existing and new institutional investors arranged by Hybridan LLP at a price of 0.35p per Ordinary Share. The Company is pleased to announce that it has posted a circular to Shareholders containing the notice of the General Meeting to be held at 11.00 a.m. on 8 January 2015 which is being convened for the purpose of proposing the Resolutions which are necessary to implement the proposed Placing. Background to and reasons for the Placing The Group has made ongoing progress in the last 12 months. Some notable achievements during this period were the successful completion and delivery of the FIFA World Cup Trophy Tour project with Coca-Cola; the much acclaimed Hyundai Rockar Bluewater Digital Showroom; Kuoni's North East flagship Newcastle outlet; audio visual and projection work for a range of Harry Ramsden's seaside restaurant locations as well as hologram creation for UK Trade & Industry (UKTI) at an international exhibition in Germany. Notwithstanding, the Group continues to develop and provide services to a diverse and high profile client base both domestically and overseas. The momentum generated by these contracts and others has helped the Group to grow top line revenues and enhance its offering to attract larger, longer term client contracts. At the end of 2013, the Board identified and implemented a new strategic approach: to concentrate sales effort on a smaller number of high profile clients, providing innovative audio visual solutions which have the potential to generate ongoing long term business opportunities, and to complement this strategy by developing its own products. The strategic objective is to generate client loyalty through excellence of delivery coupled with offering a diverse product range including the Group's own products. In particular the Board believes that such an approach will benefit the business by helping it to increase recurring revenues through service and maintenance, content production and management, and additional consultancy and data analysis work. In December 2013, the Board identified three areas where it believed the Group could embark upon product development which would allow the Company to achieve improved revenue, whilst contemporaneously creating intellectual property assets that would enhance the Group's valuation. The decision was made to prioritise audience measurement software, and the Group developed and tested its own product in this area during the year, before releasing it to the market in November 2014. A first system has already been sold and the Company is in negotiations to test its potential with a number of existing and new clients. The Company has already seen initial success with this strategy; particularly in the period since July 2014. It has already led to several large scale opportunities that the Group is currently pursuing, and has also enabled the Group to gain and deliver successfully four high profile projects in recent months. In order to enhance and deliver further value to the Group the Board believes it is in the best interests of both the Group and its shareholders to raise additional funding to build on recent progress to attain the following objectives: 1. Continue development of audience measurement product, "MediaZest Retail Analytics" The first product has been developed from the three identified target areas, and is now ready for deployment, with one site already running live. The Company has existing and potential clients interested in trialling this product. Consequently, the Board believes that investment in several test systems is merit worthy, to enable it to capitalise on the opportunities that it has identified. Early stage funding for this product was raised by the Company in December 2013, and through a commercial engagement with Argus Global (Biometric Technologies) Limited ("Argus") the Company has funded the development of this product. As such it is 100% owned by MediaZest plc. The Board believes that continuing to work with Argus and utilising additional development funds, it can continue to develop new functions of MediaZest Retail Analytics and also create further new products, some of which may involve shared ownership where the Board believes it is in the Groups best interests. 2. Improve working capital and continue investment in the sales process The Company continues to invest in the sales process to grow the business. In particular, the London showroom, opened in 2013, has proved a strong selling point for the Company in developing new client interest. The Group intends to use funds raised to continue this work, allow for additional marketing of recent successful projects and to provide future working capital. Current Trading and Prospects, expected Interim Results On 18 August 2014, the Company made the following statement on the trading outlook for the 2014/15 financial year in the annual results announcement for the year ended 31 March 2014: "There has been a large amount of time expended upon the development of the Retail Analytics product in the latter part of the Financial Year ending 31 March 2014 and the first quarter of the new Financial Year ending 31 March 2015. Further time and resource has been taken up by the final project delivery for Coca-Cola between September 2013 and May 2014. This has not improved performance in the first quarter of the Financial Year ending 31 March 2015. However, the second quarter is showing substantial improvement with several important business wins announced on 8 August 2014 and more expected prior to the end of the half year as a direct result of the changes made during the last twelve months." "The core strategy continues to be the transition of the Group's revenue base towards more ongoing, contractual-type business, and away from dependency on large scale projects which are difficult to predict and suffer the vagaries of timing. As such, efforts are being focussed on larger scale roll-out opportunities which naturally take longer to consummate than short term campaigns. The Directors believe this strategy is starting to pay dividends in the current quarter with the future pipeline in FY 2015 and beyond looking much improved." On 1 October 2014, the Company announced two new contract wins as follows: "The Group is providing programming, development and installation services for a large multi- national Company and their partners developing a new retail concept. The initial project is expected to generate revenues of approximately £400,000 with future potential to roll out across multiple UK locations and countries." "In addition several new contracts have been won in the Education sector, with value over £220,000 the largest of which will generate revenues totalling £ 180,000." "All of these projects are scheduled to be delivered in the quarter ended 31 December 2014." The Company intends to announce its unaudited interim results for the six months ended 30 September 2014 by 31 December 2014. The Company expects to report revenue for the six months ended 30 September 2014 in the region of £ 1,579,000 (2013 - £1,572,000), gross margin of approximately £528,000 (2013 - £ 576,000) and a loss for the period, after taxation, of approximately £203,000 (2013 - £183,000 loss). EBITDA is expected to be a loss of approximately £ 180,000 (2013 - £98,000 loss) before interest and finance costs of £26,000 (2013 - £77,000). The increased EBITDA loss for six months ended 30 September 2014 versus the comparable period reflects additional heavy investment that the Group has made in sales and marketing resources during that period, including additional rent costs for the London Showroom of £35,000 (occupation of which was taken 1 July 2013) and one off sales consulting costs of £13,000. Use of Proceeds The net cash proceeds of the Placing are expected to amount to approximately £ 400,000 of which up to £150,000 will be used for continued investment in sales, marketing, and development of audience measurement products including the production of advertising and case study material, advertising spend, investment in test systems for customer trials, ongoing system development and legal costs. The balance of the net cash proceeds will be applied for working capital and continued investment in sales and marketing. At the beginning of the financial year (1 April 2014), the Group had an outstanding loan from a major shareholder of £200,000. The proceeds of the Placing are not being used to repay any of this loan. Conditionality and Admission to AIM The Placing is conditional, inter alia, on the Company obtaining approval from Shareholders to grant the Directors the authority to allot the Placing Shares and to dis-apply pre-emption rights, and on admission of the Placing Shares to trading on AIM. Application will be made to the London Stock Exchange for the Placing Shares to be admitted to trading on AIM ("Admission"). It is expected that Admission will become effective at 8.00 a.m. on 9 January 2015. Total voting rights Following Admission, the Company's enlarged issued share capital will comprise 1,039,757,641 Ordinary Shares. The Company does not hold any shares in treasury. Therefore, the total number of Ordinary Shares with voting rights will be 1,039,757,641. This figure may be used by Shareholders as the denominator for the calculations by which they will determine if they are required to notify their interest in, or a change in their interest in, the share capital of the Company under the FCA's Disclosure and Transparency Rules. Terms used in this announcement but which are otherwise undefined shall have the same meanings as set out in the Circular. A copy of the Circular will be available shortly on the Company's website at www.mediazest.com Enquiries: MediaZest Plc Geoff Robertson Chief Executive Officer 020 7724 5680 Northland Capital Partners Limited Nominated Adviser Gavin Burnell / Edward Hutton 020 7382 1100 Hybridan LLP Broker Claire Noyce 020 3713 4581 William Lynne 020 3713 4582 Niall Pearson 020 3713 4583 Notes to Editors: MediaZest is a creative media agency and audio visual systems integrator that specialises in providing innovative marketing solutions to leading retailers, brand owners and corporations, but also works in the public sector in both the NHS and Education markets. The Group supplies an integrated service from content creation and system design to installation, technical support and maintenance. MediaZest was admitted to the London Stock Exchange's AIM market in February 2005. For more information, please visit www.mediazest.com