Forbidden Tech making solid progress, chairman reports

Investors in Forbidden Technologies were gathering in South West London for the firm’s annual general meeting on Tuesday, with chairman David Main set to update them on its current progress.

The AIM-traded firm, in its preliminary results for the year 2016 calendar year on 13 March, said it was debt free with a cash balance of £3.7m.

“Since the beginning of the year the board has continued to build the company's commercial capabilities in North America, through relationships with value added resellers in both the US and Canada,” Main said on Tuesday.

“In the UK we have just completed the hiring of a new sales director who will be focused on driving our sales performance outside of North America.

“Finally, we are continuing to focus on adding additional third-party channels to market and we are looking at technology licensing opportunities.”

Main said the company was making “good progress” in its search for a new CEO.

“We are working with a leading executive search firm in London and we expect to finalise a short-list of talented individuals within a few weeks and hope to make an appointment soon.”

The company started 2017 with a larger pipeline of business than at the beginning of 2016, Main claimed, and with an increased focus on the live market versus the traditional broadcast market.

“Whilst this pipeline has larger deals sizes than before we are currently experiencing a slower conversion rate than we had expected.

“However, since the beginning of the year we have announced two multi-year deals with Deltatre, including one in the last week.

“In addition, two weeks ago we announced a deal with Gfinity, our first client in the rapidly growing market of eSports.”

In the coming months we Forbidden was expecting to continue to build its sales through larger deals with longer terms than it has historically signed, Main added.

“In support of our commercial efforts, we have recently launched Blackbird 9 which will continue to strengthen the value of our Forscene platform to our customers.

“We are also continuing to undertake developments in response to specific customer needs.

“The board is confident in the commercial opportunities for the Forscene platform going forward and looks forward to reporting further progress in due course.”