(Corrects day of share price trading.)
(Alliance News) - Attraqt Group PLC on Thursday said that it backed a GBP63.2 million takeover offer from technology company Crownpeak Holdings LLC.
Crownpeak's subsidiary, Aegean Bidco Ltd, will pay 30 pence per share, a 70% premium to Attraqt's 17.50p closing price on Wednesday. So far Crownpeak has received acceptances from 42% of Attraqt's shareholders.
Shares in the London-based online shopping technology provider were trading 66% higher at 29.00 pence each on Thursday morning.
Crownpeak said that Attraqt was "an excellent fit for its investment and strategic criteria". In particular, it said "Attraqt has a leading position in delivering omni-channel AI-powered search, merchandising, and recommendation software to the eCommerce sector."
The acquisition brings Crownpeak, a technology company, greater scale in the UK and European markets and represents a platform from which to grow its geographic reach.
Chair of Attraqt Tom Crawford said: "We are pleased that Crownpeak is supportive of the acceleration of Attraqt's existing strategy and believe that Attraqt will benefit from Crownpeak's approach to value creation....As a result of the Acquisition, we believe Attraqt will be both nimbler in executing its strategy and able to build a business capable of sustainable longer-term growth, with stronger operating leverage and profitability."
The Attraqt board unanimously recommended the acquisition.
Attraqt also reported interim results on Thursday. Its pretax loss widened to GBP2.2 million in the six months to June 30 from GBP1.8 million last year. This was caused by the company's cost of sales widening to GBP3.9 million from GBP3.0 million last year and its administrative expenses widening to GBP10.4 million from GBP9.9 million.
Revenue climbed 9.5% annually to GBP12.2 million from GBP11.1 million, driven by monetising its 2021 bookings.
The company admitted that it "consumed cash" in the first half of the year but said it had taken actions which mean its cost base in the second half of the year will be materially lower than the first half. It reiterated its aim of becoming cash neutral for 2023.
Chair Crawford said: "We have seen positive momentum in bookings, with strong new logo performance despite lengthening sales cycles, but a more challenging revenue and profit performance, given the time it takes to monetise new enterprise logo wins to full revenue, combined with a material increase in cost of sales due to new customer sale patterns driving higher hosting costs and more recently the unfavourable foreign exchange movements on cost of sales."
By Chris Dorrell; chrisdorrell@alliancenews.com
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