Stockopedia News spoke earlier today with the CEO of Synchronica Plc, Carsten Brinkschulte. The AIM-listed mobile email specialist today reported a halving of its pre-tax losses to £3.2m in the year to December 2009, with revenues up slightly at £3.8m. During the year the company released an upgraded version of its flagship Mobile Gateway software and, together with its partners, launched a new mobile device called MessagePhone aimed at consumers in developing countries. A £4.7m fundraising last June was followed post year-end by a £2.8m placing in March along with an equity swap that will give it another £2.0m over the next two years. For chief executive Carsten Brinkschulte, the focus has been on signing up new mobile carriers in order to boost the company’s presence in its core markets. Investors didn’t take kindly to the results, sending the shares 6.5% lower to 1.75p. Nevertheless, Brinkschulte remains confident that the company can go on to grow its contract base and move into profitability during the rest of 2010.
Synchronica’s mobile messaging technology and award-winning product portfolio includes the flagship product Mobile Gateway, providing push email, synchronisation, instant messaging, backup & restore and mobile connectivity to social networks. Its products, including the recently launched MessagePhone, are white-labelled and offered by mobile operators in emerging and developed markets to provide mass-market messaging services. In April, the company acquired the Instant Messaging business of Colibria AS, which added 13 operator contracts to Synchronica’s books and accelerated its entry into the mobile Instant Messaging market.
Carsten, in view of your latest results, where were the key areas of progress for Synchronica during 2009?
The key area of progress was our 13 new carrier contract wins; the organic growth and customer acquisition was extremely positive. For a company of our size and stage of development I think that winning 13 carrier contracts in 12 months is very encouraging. Five of those deals were signed with partners and we established global reseller agreements with Nokia Siemens Networks, the second largest network equipment provider, as well as an unnamed Asian top-five network equipment provider and Brightstar [the American distribution group]. These 13 channels produced five contracts last year and we are very pleased about that because these partners allow us to scale our business on a global basis with local presence without having to employ hundreds of sales people.…
