Sale of House of Moves Subsidiary

RNS Number : 4333U

OMG PLC

16 October 2014

 



16 October 2014

OMG plc

("OMG" or the "Group")

Sale of House of Moves Subsidiary

OMG plc (LSE: OMG), the technology group providing image understanding products for the entertainment, defence, life science and engineering industries, announces today the completion of the sale of its Californian-based wholly owned subsidiary House of Moves Inc. ("HOM") for £0.8m pursuant to a HOM management-led buyout.

Under a share purchase agreement OMG will receive £0.8m cash consideration of which £0.3m is due on completion. The balance in deferred consideration will be spread in equal installments over the next four years.

During the first half of the 2014 financial year, the Group undertook a strategic review of HOM; a service based motion capture business. As a result, the Board determined that whilst HOM has an exciting future in content creation this no longer fits with the overall strategic direction of the Group, which is fundamentally a software and hardware technology business. At the time of the release of the interim results in June, the Board announced that negotiations for the sale of HOM were advanced having signed a non-legally binding letter of intent.

This sale concludes the divestment process of HOM. For the year ended 30 September 2013, HOM contributed revenues of £2.0m and a loss before tax of £0.7m. The total value of the assets disposed is £1.5m comprising £0.8m of goodwill and £0.7m of fixed and other assets. This transaction will generate a non-cash loss of approximately £0.7m which will be disclosed in the financial results for the year ending 30 September 2014. It is anticipated that this move will help to reduce the volatility of future profits reported by the Group and the cash received from the sale will be deployed to augment the Group's working capital.

Nick Bolton, CEO of OMG plc said:

"This move is a step in the right direction as the Board continues to explore a range of opportunities to realise value in OMG's IP, which may involve the licensing of certain technologies where external companies see value in deploying our IP to pursue their own business goals or, as in the case of House of Moves, the sale of certain assets, where we believe that greater shareholder value can be realised in the near term."

For further information please contact:

OMG plc	[phone]
Nick Bolton, CEO
David Deacon, CFO
FTI Consulting	[phone]
Matt Dixon / Emma Appleton / Charles Palmer / Harry Staight
N+1 Singer (NOMAD to OMG)	[phone]
Shaun Dobson / Jen Boorer

Notes to Editors

About OMG plc

OMG plc (Oxford Metrics Group. LSE: OMG) is a group of technology companies producing image understanding products and services for the entertainment, defence, life science and engineering industries.

The Group's technology is used to capture the movements of actors (for the movie industry), sportsmen (for video games or improving team performance), children with cerebral palsy, rehab patients and animals (for medical, life science and research industries). The technology is also used for the management of infrastructure assets or even for providing image intelligence and situational awareness from drone aircraft. Through this diverse offering the Group has earned its strong international reputation for precision from pixels.

Founded in 1984, the Group is headquartered in Oxford, UK, and has four offices in the US and two in the UK. It has customers in over 50 countries and is a quoted company listed on AIM, a market operated by the London Stock Exchange. The Group trades through four operating subsidiaries:  Vicon, the world's largest motion capture and movement analysis company, 2d3, a manufacturer of specialised image understanding software for defence applications, Yotta, a provider of software and services for infrastructure asset management and OMG Life, a new consumer subsidiary.

The Group's global clients spanning the worlds of science, medicine, sport, engineering, gaming, film and broadcast include: major hospitals and research facilities such as Guy's Hospital, Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre and Loughborough University, engineering industry leaders including: Ford Motor Company, BMW, Airbus and Toyota, and in the entertainment sector; Sony, Industrial Light and Magic, Sega, Nintendo, UbiSoft, EA and Square Enix. In infrastructure asset management, clients include Highways Agency, East Sussex, Kent, Lancashire, Transport for London, UK Power Network, Cheshire East and West as well as many others.

For more information about OMG, visit www.omgplc.com.

 

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