Outsourcery inks Vodafone finance deal as selloff rumours grow

Sickly slinger of cloud services Outsourcery has signed a finance deal with Vodafone to keep the wolves from the door as it prepares to restructure – or do what some are interpreting as readying itself for a sale.

The AIM-listed bringer of infrastructure, apps and UC services revealed at the start of this week it is again facing liquidity issues after pre-announcing calendar year 2015 sales that were well out from early estimates.

Sales for 2015 came in at £8.1m, up nine per cent year-on-year, but this was short of earlier forecasts of first £11.1m and then £8.5m and indicated shrinkage in the second half of the year. As a result, the firm said it was forced to consider restructuring and the disposal of non core assets.

Outsourcery told the City today it had struck a deal with principal secured lender Vodafone for the terms of a new conditional drawdown working capital facility, subject to meeting Ts&Cs including appointing a “proposed” non-exec director.

The company said the funds give it space to “seek to undertake a realisation of the principal assets of the company in the immediate term”.

Given the new financial crutch, “proposed asset realisation and previously announced restructuring”, the full-blown audited financials should be released on the last day of June, Outsourcery said.

Analyst Megabuyte took the summer delivery of 2015 results as the seeming “deadline” for Outsourcery to “announce a sale”, and that Vodafone and hosting biz UKFast, whose CEO has already invested £1m in Outsourcery, are the most likely candidates.

Our sources also speculated that co-CEOs Piers Linney and Simon Newton may actually want out of the organisation. The pair already tried to lure Insight UK boss Emma de Sousa to join as MD and manage operations on a daily basis, but she turned them down after agreeing a starting date.

Outsourcery listed on AIM in May 2013 at 117 pence but at the time of writing today, they are trading at just 6.25 pence – albeit it this is 72 per cent better than on Monday, when the market got visibility of the 2015 financials.

The market cap stands at around £2.53m. ®