Thursday February 14th 2019

Thursday February 14th 2019

Pub group - Health services - Property development - Fashion chain –
Event Production & Talent Management - Broadcast software
- Telecoms software - Broadcast technology –

The City Pub Group £27.8m | Oviva | East Eight £6.3m | Bonmarché £190m | Mass Movement £2m | Amino Technologies £75.2m | Mirada £6.6m | Pebble Beach Systems £10.9m

News about 8 UK growth companies and/or accelerators + turnover in the GRID marketplace 19th – 25th November 2017:

THE CITY PUB GROUP: Pub group - London
Made in Chelsea dad Clive Watson toasts £90m float of City Pub Group | Peter Evans, The Sunday Times. November 19 2017
DZ profile: The City Pub Group Plc
Business: owns and operates an estate of 34 free houses across London and southeast England located largely in London, cathedral cities and market towns …. predominantly freehold, managed pubs.
Launched: 2012
Location: London
Founder: Clive Watson, 56, previously ran the Capital Pub Company, which was sold to Greene King for £93m six years ago. Watson, has made guest appearances on Made in Chelsea alongside his daughters Lucy and Tiffany. The Phene, a gastropub owned by Watson near the King’s Road in Chelsea, is often used as a location for filming the show. Watson, previously finance director of REGENT INNS and founder of TUP INNS
Financials:  turnover £27.8m in the year ending 25-Dec-16
Investment: Floated on AIM 23 Nov 2017.
News: will raise at least £30m through a float of his business ….will be valued at about £90m when it floats on AIM. The company will use the cash it raises to expand and plans to double the number of venues over the next four years. Brokers LIBERUM and BERENBERG worked on the float.

OVIVA: health services - London
Obesity app piles on the pounds in fundraising led by Fidelity investment arm Eight Roads | Peter Evans, The Sunday Times. November 19, 2017
DZ profile: Oviva Uk Limited
Business: app developed to tackle rising obesity levels ….offers virtual clinics and weight-loss programmes for people with diet-related conditions such as type 2 diabetes and obesity. The technology works in a similar way to the Whatsapp messaging service, with reminders from trained dieticians who work with individual patients. Oviva has recently been selected as a digital provider for the NHS and has been used by 20,000 patients in Britain, Switzerland and Germany. The health service is experimenting with “virtual doctor” services in an attempt to reduce costs.
Launched: 2015
Location: based in south London and Zurich
FounderS: chief executive, Kai Eberhardt  and Mark Jenkins, a doctor
Investment: has received $12m (£9m) in a funding round led by EIGHT ROADS, an investment arm of the fund manager FIDELITY.
News:

1. “If the patient knows there is an actual person looking after them, it means they are less likely to want to disappoint them by eating three desserts in a day.” The UK is the most obese country in western Europe, according to a recent OECD report, which showed that 26.9% of the population are officially classified as obese, with levels up by 92% since the early 1990s.

UPDATE:

Pitching to the NHS can damage your health | Peter Evans and Liam Kelly, The Sunday Times. December 16 2018

2. Last year it raised $12m (£9.5m) from backers including EIGHT ROADS.

3. Oviva is now used by 56 - of the more than 190 clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) in England - CCGs keen to tackle rising obesity. 

EAST EIGHT: property development - London
Property ladder began in Hackney | Liam Kelly, The Sunday Times. November 19 2017
DZ profile: East Eight Construction Limited
Business: high-end developer that has 11 projects under way in southeast England, from a £5m flat in Kensington, west London, to a block of 40 flats in Luton. The developments have a combined value of more than £20m. East Eight targets the lucrative top end of the market, but the founder is keen to help preserve the character of local areas. Earlier this year she helped an east London youth club to secure a long-term affordable lease on space in the redevelopment of its former premises.
Launched: 2011
Location: St John’s Wood, northwest London
Founder: Nicole Bremner, 39 ….has a degree in finance from Deakin University, Melbourne, which she completed remotely. Jobs with Bank Austria and Bank of America … Goldman Sachs. Her first and most enduring foray into entrepreneurship was BRITTIQUE, an online fashion retailer featuring top British designers.
Staff: 63: three people to run East Eight’s operations from an office and a further 60 on the construction side.
Financials: Last year, East Eight posted sales of £6.3m and pre-tax profits of £1.2m.
Investment: Bremner owns all the business
News:
1. Nicole Bremner started off by selling a flat she owned for £800,000 and raising a further £500,000 by remortgaging her family home. That gave her the money to launch East Eight. first bought a rundown listed vicarage in Hackney, east London, and converted it into a luxury home that was sold for a £500,000 profit.
2. For expertise on the construction side, she teamed up with Avi Dodi in 2012. After more than 25 years in property, he “was able to teach me how it’s done”, said Bremner
3. Bremner partners with investors on a project-by- project basis. She typically contributes 30% of the cost, with the rest coming from other developers or through crowdfunding. In the past year, Bremner has raised £5.8m online, with more than 100 investors contributing between £500 and £1.3m.
4. She plans to move into the buy-to-let market once the current projects are completed and sold, “so we can have some income-producing assets”, rather than relying on returns from big capital investments.

BONMARCHÉ: fashion chain - Yorkshire
Bonmarché posts higher profits but warns of UK high street uncertainty | Nicholas Megaw, FT. November 20, 2017
DZ profile: Bonmarche Holdings Plc
Business: Women's fashion retailer …is in the middle of a major restructuring drive to modernise its business. “…one of the UK’s largest women value retailers focused on selling affordable, stylish, premium quality clothing and accessories in a wide range of sizes to mature women via our own store portfolio, website, mail order catalogues and through the Ideal World TV shopping channel.”
Launched: 1982
Location: Wakefield, West Yorkshire
Founder: Parkash Singh Chima
Staff: Helen Connolly, chief executive
Financials: 12 months to 01-Apr- 17 (2016) – Revenues £190m (£188m); Pre-Tax £ 5.8m (£9.6m). Reported revenues of £97.8m for the 26 weeks to September 30, 5 per cent higher than the same period last year. Pre-tax profit rose from £2m to £4.2m, in line with the company’s expectations.
Investment: 2013 lists on AIM, 2015 moves up to the London Stock Exchange’s main market.

UPDATE:
Bonmarche's profits leap despite tough clothing market | Alys Key, City A.M. 19 June 2018
...defied the gloom hanging over the high street clothing market this morning with full-year results showing continued profit recovery. Pre-tax profits jumped 38 per cent to £8m. Total revenue fell to £186m, down from £190m last year. But online sales soared by 34.5 per cent. Like-for-like sales in store were down 4.5 per cent. Shares were up 7.3 per cent at 110p this morning.

MASS MOVEMENT: Event Production & Talent Management - London
Entrepreneurs: How the queen of razzmatazz put showbiz into events | Alex Lawson, The Evening Standard. November 21
DZ profile: Mass Movement Management Limited
Business: Live Event Production Company and Talent Management Agency. Team of creative directors and choreographers responsible for producing huge spectacles for TV shows, live performances, award ceremonies and corporate events.
Launched: 2007
Location: London
Founders: Nadia Raibin and Christian Storm
Staff: 6 permanent
Financials: turnover £2m last year

Small-cap focus: tech groups behind TV broadcasting | Aliya Ram, FT. November 24, 2017

After decades of growth, broadcasters have been forced to hammer out alternate methods of generating revenue from viewers who no longer want to pay for traditional TV. Netflix and Amazon are encroaching. Some large operators are launching their own streaming services to compete. In the middle of this is a crop of small UK technology companies that have developed systems to underpin TV broadcasting. As viewers increasingly watch video on their phones, tablets and laptops, these businesses have been forced to modernise.

They have had mixed success. Faced with the rapidly-changing media landscape, technology companies have tried to carve out new niches while competing with agile start-ups and rivals. Here are three of the companies.

AMINO TECHNOLOGIES: telecoms software - Cambridge
DZ profile: Amino Technologies Plc
Business: founded as a business selling set-top boxes …now sells software to telecoms companies that want to distribute TV to their broadband customers on phones, laptops and tablets. “The modern consumer wants TV where they want it, when they want it and on the device they want it,” said Mr McGarva. “We help operators respond to the needs of video and TV of the future.”
Launched: 1997
Location: Cambridge
Staff: 150 of the company’s 230 staff work in software. Chief executive, Donald McGarva.
Financials: 12 months to 30-Nov-16 (2015) - Revenue £75.2m (£41.7m); Pre-Tax £2.9m (£0.3m). Group revenues increased by a fifth to £39.9m in the six months to May 31. The group swung to a pre-tax profit of £4.8m, compared with £545,000 of losses in the same period last year. This year the shares are up almost 10 per cent to £1.90, giving the company a market capitalisation of £140m.
Investment: Aim-listed group
News: has performed well in the US and Latin American markets despite competition from big businesses such as Huawei and ZTE, which provide similar technology.

MIRADA: Broadcasting software - London
DZ profile: Mirada Plc
Business: sells its software to TV operators and broadcasters that want their viewers to have one place where they can find their favourite programmes. According to its annual report, its clients have included major broadcasters SKY, BT, ITV and the BBC. Mirada’s software is known as “middleware” and sits between broadcast programmes and viewers in a market that is hotly contested by rivals. The group is competing in faster growing markets such as Latin America, Asia and eastern Europe.
Launched: 2000
Location: London
Financials: 12 months to 31-Mar-17 – Revenues £6.6m. It struggled over the past year as competition has increased in its market. The cost of hiring more sales representatives contributed to ballooning losses before tax, which rose to £5.4m in the year to March 31, compared with £829,000 a year earlier. Its share price has lost about three-quarters of its value in the past year, falling to 1p, giving the company a market value of £1.19m.
Investment: Floated on AIM in Dec 2004.

PEBBLE BEACH SYSTEMS: Broadcast technology – Weybridge, Surrey.
DZ profile: Pebble Beach Systems Group Plc
Business: software - TV operators including Fox News and ZDF Germany have used it to automate aspects of their programming, especially during live broadcasts. …has developed technology that captures and shares information during news and sports broadcasts. It attracted customers in the early 2000s as broadcasters began to offer more multiscreen options to viewers. However Pebble Beach has struggled more recently as TV broadcasters change their approach and offer more programmes on-demand rather than live.
Launched: 2000
Location: Weybridge
Staff: John Varney, non-executive chairman
Financials: 12 months to 31-Dec-16 (2015) – Revenues £10.88m (£10.95m). Revenues from continuing operations shrank 14.5 per cent to £4.6m in the half year to June 30. The company's share price has dropped 90 per cent to 1.7p since January, giving the company a market value of £1.75m.
Investment: Listed on AIM Jan 2014.
News: In February it sold VISLINK COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS business, its hardware division, and launched a strategic review of the business. “The broadcast market continues to display volatility,” of the company said at the company’s half-year results in September.