Defenx shares plummet as board confirms full-year struggles

Investors in cyber-security software group Defenx watched the bottom hinge away from their investments on Monday, after the company confirmed in a trading update that revenues for the year to 31 December 2017 would be materially below those in the previous year.

The AIM-traded firm said it would report a significant loss for the full year.

Defenx tried to give the dark cloud a silver lining, also announcing that following the appointment of Alessandro Poerio as chief executive officer in November, progress had been made in developing a corporate sales pipeline focused particularly on the group's cloud offering, which continued to attract “significant” customer interest.

“Progress has also been made in bringing the group's development activities in house enabling our team to continue to address the previously announced performance and back-end integration issues,” the board said in its statement.

“The company anticipates providing a further update on its strategy and prospects together with a detailed trading update by late February.”

Defenx said the collection of trade debtors remained difficult, with limited collections since mid-November.

Management was continuing to pursue “all options” to collect amounts due to the group including legal proceedings, the board explained, to accelerate the collection of outstanding trade debtors and secure new orders from historical and new customer relationships.

“As at 22 January, the company had €0.81m of cash and undrawn facilities of approximately €0.75m - consisting of a £0.45m supply chain facility, €0.17m invoice discounting facilities and an overdraft of €20k,” Defenx explained.

“In the event that cash collection remains weak, the group is unable to drawdown its facilities and new orders do not come through as expected, the group may be required to seek additional funding in late-Q2 2018.”

As at 1503 GMT, shares in Defenx were down 38.44% at 21.75p.