Directorate Change

RNS Number : 7923O

Synchronica PLC

23 September 2011

 



Synchronica Plc

Directorate Change and Payment Delays

Synchronica plc ("Synchronica" or "the Company"), the international provider of next-generation mobile messaging solutions, announces several changes to the Board of Directors.

Carsten Brinkschulte and Nicole Meissner have yesterday left Synchronica. The Board would like to express its thanks to them for their contribution to the Company and wishes them well for the future.

Appointment of Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

With immediate effect, David Mason will become Executive Chairman and Angus Dent, previously Chief Financial Officer, will take the role of Chief Executive Officer. David has been non-Executive Chairman of Synchronica for four years and Angus has been a member of the Synchronica board for over five years. The Board therefore believes both have the skills and experience necessary to see the business through its next phase of its development.

Arthur Phillips ACA, Synchronica's Company Secretary, will become interim CFO of the Company.  The Company has built an excellent senior management team and will seek to strengthen the Board over the coming months.  

Acquisition of Nokia's OBM Business

The acquisition of Nokia's OBM business was completed on 31 July 2011. The first month's invoices under Synchronica's ownership of this business have now been raised and the Board is pleased to announce that they were in line with its expectations. Synchronica did not acquire accounts receivable as part of this transaction.

Delay in payment by customers

The Company is owed payment from a number of device manufacturer customers which were granted extended payment terms.  Payment terms for these orders were linked to the manufacture of devices to which Synchronica software was applied.  However due to delays in delivery of third party software to these device manufacturers, many of these devices are yet to be manufactured.  The device manufacturers have yet to pay Synchronica for the software licences provided. It had been expected that some US$2m would be collected from these customers in Q4 2011. However it is now clear that a significant part of this cash will not be collected until 2012. Synchronica continues to work with the customers and is confident that this situation will be resolved and Synchronica paid.

Although the above delay impacts Synchronica's cash flow, the Company expects to alleviate this through acceleration of payments from other customers, invoice discounting and / or short term loans. The Company will also seek to reduce its cost base. 

 

For more information, please contact:

Synchronica plc	David Mason, Executive Chairman	[phone]
	Angus Dent, CEO	[phone]
Walbrook PR		[phone]
Media Enquiries	Paul McManus	[e-mail]
Investor Enquiries	Paul Cornelius	[e-mail]
TMX	[phone] Ext 290
Northland Capital Partners		[phone]
(Nominated Adviser)	Shane Gallwey/Rod Venables
(Corporate Broker)	Katie Shelton

About Synchronica

Synchronica plc is a leading developer of next-generation mobile messaging solutions. Mobile Gateway, Synchronica's flagship product, provides push email, synchronization, instant messaging (IM), and social networking services to any mobile phone currently in use. Synchronica's patented transcoding engine uses advanced streaming to download email attachments and can dramatically reduce the consumption of network bandwidth by as much as 90 percent.

Mobile operators and device manufacturers from emerging and developed markets rely on Synchronica's white-labelled product for providing mass market messaging services across the entire customer base, diversifying revenues and reducing churn.

Headquartered in England, Synchronica also maintains a development center in Germany and the Philippines in addition to a regional presence in Canada, the USA, Hong Kong, Spain, and Dubai. Synchronica plc is a public company traded on the AIM list of the London Stock Exchange (SYNC) and the Venture Exchange of the Toronto Stock Exchange (SYN). For further information, please visit www.synchronica.com

 

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