Blinkx launches share offer to raise £5m

Existing shareholders including Autonomy to increase stake after Blinkx reserves fall by £13m

Mark Sweney
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 3 November 2009 10.31 GMT
Article history
The video search company Blinkx has today announced that it is offering increased stakes to existing shareholders to raise £5m after burning through £13m of its cash reserve in the past year.

Blinkx, which was built on technology developed at Cambridge University, has seen its cash reserve plummet from $32m (£19.6m) to $10.7m (£6.6m) in the year to the end of September. In the six months to the end of September the reserves fell by $8m (£4.9m).

The share placing will see Blinkx's largest shareholder, Autonomy, from which the company demerged in 2007, increase its stake from 19% to 26%.

Revenue at the video search company doubled to $13m (£8m) in the first six months of the year, but losses also doubled year on year to almost $7m (£4.3m) over the same period.

The company, which has video content deals with firms including CBS, NBC and ITN, said that gross profits were up 88% year on year in the first six months of 2009 to $8.48m (£5.2m).

Blinkx said that the number of ad campaigns running around video content had increased 238% year on year and the number of video streams delivered through partnerships increased by more than 170%.

"As evidenced by these results, Blinkx has made significant progress and enjoyed vigorous growth through the economic downturn," said the company's founder and chief executive, Suranga Chandratillake.

"We are ready to ride the wave of the imminent upturn – we are fully funded and will take all appropriate opportunities to continue our rapid expansion."

Analysts forecast that Blinkx will move into profitability at some point in 2011.

from The Guardian

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Comment: so profibaility in 2011 now, when shareholders were expecting it in 2010 (because, er, that's what Chandratillake said)...

Which makes even stronger the case for a full disclosure by Blinkx management of the company's position and trading - including FULL details of the Zango acquisition (how much they paid, what they got for it), the status of Transaction Hijacking, and all other relevant issues...