Business Update

RNS Number : 7415O

Digital Barriers plc

11 August 2014

 



11 August 2014

Digital Barriers plc

("Digital Barriers")

Business Update

The Board of Digital Barriers plc (the "Group"), the specialist provider of advanced surveillance technologies to the security and defence sectors today provides a business update, with particular reference to its progress in West Africa and the current Ebola outbreak.

In May this year, the Board announced its first significant contract win in West Africa. This contract took the form of a £300,000 deployment of its wide area surveillance solution within a high-security government location, part of a broader programme for which the customer has approved additional deployments expected to be valued at a further £1.2 million which were in progress. The Group has also engaged heavily in ongoing dialogue with government customers in the same region around oil and gas, border protection and critical infrastructure programmes, with a strong expectation of material projects this financial year for which initial contract discussions were already underway.

As a consequence of the Ebola outbreak, and as a necessary precaution to guarantee staff welfare, the Group has avoided travel by sales and technical pre-sales staff to the region during the last month whilst keeping the situation under constant review. Following the recent intensification of the situation, the Group does not now expect staff travel to the region to recommence in the near term.

Given the Group was negotiating contracts in West Africa for the deployment of further wide area surveillance solutions with an expected value in excess of £6 million, this will have a clear impact on the Group's expected revenues from the region this financial year, particularly in this first half.

Although it now appears unlikely that these contracts can still be finalized and delivered this financial year with inevitable consequences for Group financial performance, the Board remains confident that the contracts in question will ultimately be fulfilled.

Further the strong ongoing sales traction which the Group is also experiencing in other geographies, including the United States and Asia Pacific, provides significant confidence that some of the shortfall will be recovered from other customers. For example, the Group recently secured separate contracts for its ThruVision standoff people screening solution from a major United States police department and for the security of an Asia-Pacific leadership summit, each valued at more than £250,000. The Group also continues to see very strong interest for its Integrated Surveillance Platform for major government security programmes and for its TVI video platform into defence and law enforcement agencies around the world and is actively engaged in contract negotiations in several cases.

Tom Black, Executive Chairman of Digital Barriers commented:

"Digital Barriers has developed some very strong and important relationships with people within West Africa. Our first thoughts are with friends and associates there with the hope that this health crisis can be brought quickly under control.

We have invested significant time and effort in developing a strategic sales pipeline in the fast growing economies of West Africa and our hope and expectation is that although we will see inevitable delays, we can work with our local partners to ensure these delays are kept to a minimum. In the interim we are already seeing very significant sales traction with customers across other target regions and expect positive contract news throughout the year."

For further information, please contact:

Digital Barriers plc	Tel: [phone]
Tom Black, Chairman
Sharon Cooper, Finance Director
Investec Investment Banking	Tel: [phone]
Andrew Pinder/ Dominic Emery
FTI Consulting	Tel: [phone]
Edward Bridges/ Matt Dixon/ Elodie Castagna

About Digital Barriers

Digital Barriers provides advanced surveillance technologies to the international homeland security and defence markets, specialising in 'edge-intelligent' solutions that are designed for remote, hostile or complex operating environments. We work with governments, multinational corporations and system integrators in the defence, law enforcement, critical infrastructure, transportation and natural resources sectors. Our surveillance technologies have been successfully proven on some of the most demanding operational and environmental deployments around the world.

www.digitalbarriers.com 

 

END

 

 

TSTEFLBFZVFEBBB