Fitbug interims healthier after focus swtiches to 'corporate wellness'

Fitbug reported a fall in first-half sales but said a strategy to focus on 'corporate wellness' rather than the retail sector had resulted in a near-halving of losses.

Group sales fell by just over a quarter to £0.73m, though business-to-business (B2B) sales rose 52% on a like-for-like basis.

Fitbug, which since the 30 June period end completed a £2.61m fundraising and converted £8.4m of core debt into equity, decided to provide "digital wellness solutions" to companies through three key partners so far, after its attempts to break the consumer market proved unsustainable.

The reduced cost base from this strategy, with a "substantially smaller, more focused and experienced team", saw a £1.64m loss before tax in the period, much improved from the £3.2m last time.

Management aim to continue to cut costs "significantly", with a target of reducing expenses by over 30% in the current financial year.

"Having only brought the new corporate wellness offering to market at the end of 2015, it is great to see the company starting to benefit from the new strategy in such a short period of time," said chief executive Anna Gudmundson on Wednesday.

"It is still early days for our digital wellness platform but we pleased to see our clients using the service and, in the case of some large organisations, starting rollouts across thousands of employees."

After the release of results late on Wednesday morning, Fitbug's shares spiked up to above 0.4p, up 65% from July's 0.25p fundraising price at which they have stood of late, but are still less than half their level at the start of the year and well off their 52-week peak of 2.7p.