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RNS Number : 4760M
Forbidden Technologies PLC
30 April 2018
30 April 2018
Forbidden Technologies plc
("Forbidden" or the "Company")
Annual General Meeting Statement
Forbidden Technologies plc (AIM: FBT), the developer and seller
of cloud video platform technology using its patented Blackbird
technology is holding its Annual General Meeting today at 14:00pm
at the Company's offices, Tuition House, 27-37 St George's Road,
Wimbledon, London, SW19 4EU.
Ahead of the formal business of the meeting, David Main,
Chairman of Forbidden, will make the following statement:
"Before proceeding with the formal part of the AGM, I should
like to take the opportunity of commenting on the Company's
progress since we last met. We published our audited results for
the year ended 31 December 2017 on 15(th) March 2018.
Whilst 2017 was a disappointing year in respect of sales growth
there were some positives that we took into 2018. These
included:
-- The Company has brought in a strong commercially focused and
externally appointed CEO, Ian McDonough, who is looking forward to
speaking with you after the formal business of the AGM is
concluded.
-- We also hired a strong experienced sales director who has been in place since July.
-- The Company reset its strategy to be exclusively B2B focused,
and more specifically to be driving recurring infrastructure sales
versus the traditional project-based revenue generated from the
broadcast post market. By the end of the year, the percentage of
total invoiced sales from recurring infrastructure sales in 2017
grew to 48% versus 28% in 2016.
-- North America is very much a focus, particularly in the
sports market, with revenues increasing year on year by 18%.
-- We broke into the eSports market with Gfinity, a leading eSports content producer.
-- In the development of our platform, we launched our patent
pending Blackbird 9 codec and have made the strategic move to start
providing our applications in JavaScript rather than Java.
Since joining, Ian has further strengthened the team against a
much more intensively targeted sales strategy focused against our
real market strengths in live and remote applications. The team now
includes proven sales resources based in the US and Europe, and an
experienced senior marketing and product management team.
Given that the Company incurred a loss after tax in the year
ended 31 December 2017 of GBP2,336,000, let me touch on the matter
of going concern. In terms of Invoiced Sales we have had a good
first quarter showing a high double-digit growth vs. last year. Our
internal forecasts are based on the forecast of three types of
sales - recurring infrastructure sales from existing customers,
repeat and new projects from existing customers and new sales from
new customers. There are varying risks of achievement of these
forecasts by sales type. The Directors believe that the combination
of these forecasts along with the 1(st) quarter 2018 performance,
sales pipeline growth, and potential cost management actions,
demonstrate the business is operationally capable of meeting its
obligations as they fall due and are confident they have plans in
place to ensure the continuity of the business for at least twelve
months.
In addition to our 1(st) quarter invoiced sales growth, post
year-end we have completed the final two steps of putting our new
strategy in place. These were to prove and make significant
progress towards converting our web applications from Java to
JavaScript, and finally to launch our unified brand for our
platform and solutions - Blackbird(R). The two core solutions that
we have launched are Blackbird Ascent and Blackbird Forte. At the
most recent National Association of Broadcasters ("NAB") conference
in Las Vegas, the most important media technology exhibition just
completed in April, this positioning and branding was very well
received.
The Board is very aware that the significant value of our
technology platform far exceeds the current revenue profile in the
business. With the repositioning complete, the Board is fully
committed to exploring all opportunities to optimise the value of
the business for shareholders. This includes growing sales as
currently described above and exploring technology licensing and
strategic partnership opportunities going forward.
The Board is confident that the business is now well placed, and
has the right leadership and team, to make real progress in
realising full value from our Blackbird technology and
platform".
In addition, Ian McDonough Chief Executive Officer of Forbidden,
will make the following statement:
"Our new strategic direction is to position our business under
the Blackbird(R) brand and sell our solutions as a core part of the
Company's video capabilities. We believe Blackbird is the only
codec in the world that has been specifically designed for editing
(or as we prefer to say manipulating) video in the cloud. As a
consequence, it has some very significant points of difference from
the competition. It is now our strategy to focus on these real
advantages in key verticals.
What does this mean?
It means that Blackbird provides a frictionless, fluid,
highly-responsive workstation-like experience in the cloud. No
competitor provides this experience as they are using codecs such
as H.264/5. H.264 is a streaming codec designed for playback and
not high-performance cloud editing. In a typical cloud editing
context it can be difficult to manipulate, leading to poor
navigation and an unresponsive experience. In contrast Blackbird
will edit frame accurately at 60 frames per second as a web-based
tool. That is how we position Blackbird. The only true cloud-native
solution in a world that is rushing towards the cloud. That's a
powerful place to be.
The Blackbird master brand was officially launched at the
National Association of Broadcasters ("NAB") conference in Las
Vegas earlier this month.
We have now elevated Blackbird to become our master brand. The
platform known as Forscene is now a part of Blackbird. Our core
products under Blackbird are now clearly defined and include
Blackbird Forte and Blackbird Ascent.
Blackbird Forte is our premium fully specified story creation
and publishing solution. Our roadmap for Forte includes opening up
the APIs to interface with enriched graphics packages,
time-accurate metadata exchange and Artificial Intelligence.
We have introduced Blackbird Ascent, a simple interface clipper
for 'professionals who are not editors'. These are for people such
as journalists, reporters, researchers, marketers and the social
media team, who need to clip and publish without professional
editing experience.
Blackbird Edge is our other main product, which allows customers
to create the proxy on a Linux box, Windows or indeed a Mac. This
significantly overcomes complexities of ingesting content into the
cloud. Blackbird Edge is a software defined conduit to the power of
the cloud whereby content can be tracked while remaining in its
existing location. This layer is topped with a selection of
lightweight, web-based user applications such as Blackbird Ascent
or the more comprehensive toolsets of Blackbird Forte to enable
virtual use of the same (original) content without the need to
scale up infrastructure. Ultimately the compelling idea that in our
world of large video files you move the 'computing to the content'
rather than the 'content to the computing' is a key principle of
Blackbird Edge. Customers looking to increase monetisation of video
content for online and social media can have these capabilities
without the complex rollouts, making Blackbird Edge highly
attractive.
With the Java program being translated into JavaScript, we will
be able to make the claim that the Blackbird can be used on any
standard device, and on any browser from anywhere.
The ongoing roll-out of the Blackbird 9 codec affords users of
the proxy a high enough quality viewing experience to publish
directly to social media, thus enhancing the efficiency of the
media supply chain.
Early adopter customers have already understood the power, speed
and quality of Blackbird and we invariably now see it being adopted
as an integral component of their technology infrastructure. For us
this is a SaaS model with recurring revenues, which is our business
model.
Both Deltatre and IMG are great examples of our capability to be
part of a large and international media supply chain. Both of these
customers have recently renewed their contracts with us and we
continue to increase the volume and variety of work we are
undertaking with them. Another example of this is in the burgeoning
genre of eSports where we are a partner to Gfinity plc and more
recently ESP Gaming in Las Vegas.
This approach to the market is a marked change for the business.
The combined use of the Blackbird 9 codec and our JavaScript
applications enables our technology to be a fundamental component
to our clients' infrastructure and makes Forbidden a valued and key
partner to their business. Recently we have announced a number of
new infrastructure clients including Practising Law Institute and a
significant Japanese telco, as well as some important wins in our
traditional post-production business including Middlechild.
As I mentioned in my Shareholder Update on 13 December we had a
record number of Proof of Concepts ("POCs") in play. I'm happy to
report a number of these have converted successfully including the
fixed rig show and the Japanese telco. The North American
broadcaster and several other POCs are also still live. As a policy
though we have moved away from the POC strategy, focusing instead
on negotiating straight to contract.
The team have just returned from a very busy NAB, where we had a
much bigger presence than in 2017 and I can report we have some
very interesting infrastructure sales opportunities to follow up in
the coming months. These opportunities are looking to build
relationships with technology providers to partner with them and
provide a non-disruptive path for a flexible and scalable
future.
The whole Blackbird team has left NAB with an even greater
enthusiasm for the innovative Blackbird platform and the benefits
it can bring to more efficiently create and monetise content".
Enquiries:
Forbidden Technologies plc
Ian McDonough, CEO
Jonathan Lees, Finance Director
Tel: +44 (0)20 8879 7245
Allenby Capital Limited (Nominated Adviser and Broker)
Nick Naylor
John Depasquale
Katrina Perez
Tel: +44 (0)20 3328 5656
About Forbidden Technologies plc:
Forbidden Technologies plc (AIM: FBT, www.forbidden.co.uk)
floated in February 2000.
Forbidden develops, markets and licenses a powerful cloud video
platform using our patented Blackbird technology. The technology
underpins multiple applications which are used by rights holders,
broadcasters, sports and news video specialists, post-production
houses, other mass market digital video channels and
corporations.
The Blackbird technology allows full visibility on
multi-location digital content, improves time to market for live
content such as video clips and highlights for social media
distribution, and results in much more effective monetisation.
Blackbird(R) is a registered trademark of Forbidden Technologies
plc.
Websites:
www.forbidden.co.uk
www.blackbird.video
Social media:
www.linkedin.com/company/forbidden
www.twitter.com/BlackbirdCloud
www.facebook.com/BlackbirdCloudVideo/
This information is provided by RNS
The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
END
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