Coms Enterprise and Placing

RNS Number : 2975C

Coms PLC

30 April 2012

 



27 April 2012

Coms plc

("Coms", the "Company" or the "Group")

Recruits New Sales Team and Launches Enterprise Division with first Corporate and Public Sector Customers

and

Placing and Issue of Equity

Coms is pleased to announce the launch of Coms Enterprise Limited ('Enterprise Division'), a new business division, together with the recruitment of an experienced sales and account management team from Obsidian Limited ('Obsidian'), a mobile telecoms business services provider.

The Enterprise Division has entered into an outsource agreement with Obsidian  under which Coms will provide a range of telephony services to the customers of Obsidian and for the new sales and account management team to sell Com's full range of Internet Telephony products to the extended customer base. The new sales team will focus on enabling these corporate and public sector customers to use the Coms VoIP service, delivering recurring revenues into the business.

The sales team will sell the full suite of Coms solutions and have already successfully delivered their first customers onto the Coms platform. The Enterprise Division's agreement with Obsidian will see its customers provided with services which can support up to 5 million call minutes to mobile phones in the UK. This arrangement is expected to make the new business division immediately cash flow neutral and the unit is expected to be earnings enhancing later in the current financial year.

The Obsidian customer base consists of 195 Customers, based on 24 month managed service contracts with a total of £2.36 million of billable airtime revenue p.a. representing 118 million mobile minutes.

The Coms Enterprise Division team will be lead by Paul Sweetland and Gary Day who are responsible for delivering the new Division's targets.  Coms has issued 13,365,708 EMI options at an option price of 1p to Paul Sweetland and 8,910,472 EMI options at an option price of 1p to Gary Day, that are conditional upon achieving £1 million of profit before tax in Coms Enterprise within the next 2 years. The EMI options are in 5 equal tranches, with the first tranche exercisable once Coms Enterprise has become cash flow positive and the four further tranches exercisable on Coms Enterprise achieving Gross Profit milestones of £250,000, £500,000, £750,000 and 1,000,000 respectively.

Coms is also pleased to announce a share placing (the 'Placing') of 43,750,000 new ordinary shares of 0.1 pence each in the capital of the Company ('New Ordinary Shares') to new and existing investors at a price of 0.8p pence per share raising £350,000 before expenses.

The net proceeds of the Placing will be used by the Company to provide working capital for the development of the Company's enlarged operations.

MXC Capital Limited ('MXC'), a technology, media and telecommunications sector focused consultancy and a significant shareholder in the Company, has participated in the Placing and as a result its shareholding will increase from 43,750,000 ordinary shares to 53,446,680 ordinary shares (which will represent 23.30 per cent of the Company's enlarged issued ordinary share capital following the Placing).

The New Ordinary Shares to be issued will represent approximately 19.07 per cent of the Company's enlarged issued ordinary share capital following the Placing.

Application will be made for the New Ordinary Shares to be admitted to trading on AIM. It is expected that Admission will be effective and that dealings in the shares will commence on Thursday, 3 May 2012.

The New Ordinary Shares will rank pari passu with the existing ordinary shares.

The Company's enlarged issued ordinary share capital immediately following the Placing will be 229,384,894 ordinary shares. 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 to their interest in, the share capital of the Company under the Disclosure and Transparency Rules.

Richard Bennett, CEO, commented: "The market for VoIP services continues to expand and I am excited that this proven sales team will actively promote the Coms proposition of reduced costs and increased functionality to corporate and government customers.  The sales team has hit the ground running leveraging off the existing contracts of Obsidian with significant new customers and a substantial pipeline of almost 200 prospects which, I believe, they have an excellent chance of winning given the team's customer retention record at their previous home."

Contact:

Coms plc

Richard Bennett                           [phone] 

Northland plc (Nominated Adviser and Broker)

Luke Cairns /Rod Venables             [phone]

 
XCAP Securities Limited (Broker)

Karen Kelly / John Belliss                [phone]

Newgate Threadneedle (PR)
Graham Herring                            [phone]

 

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