(Alliance News) - Bidstack Group PLC on Tuesday warned of a widened annual loss and reduced revenue but said it is "well placed" to take advantage of changes in the in-video game advertising market.
Shares in the company were 18% lower at 6.39 pence each in London on Tuesday morning.
For 2019, Bidstack expects revenue to more than halve to around GBP150,000 from GBP316,906 in 2018.
The London-based company anticipates its operating loss to widen to GBP5.3 million from GBP3.3 million.
Excluding acquisition costs, Bidstack's operating loss in 2018 would have been GBP1.2 million. The company formerly did life as a cash shell named Kin Group PLC before completing a reverse takeover of software company Bidstack Ltd for GBP6.8 million in August 2018.
Bidstack said: "Notwithstanding the company having failed to meet its revenue targets for 2019, the board is pleased with Bidstack's progress towards its goal of becoming the world's leading advertising network in video games, evidenced most recently by the signing of a major advertising trading agreement."
The company in December said it entered a two-year trading agreement with an undisclosed global marketing group.
Under the terms of the agreement, Bidstack's in-game advertising platform will be made available to the marketing group's advertising clients.
Bidstack said on Tuesday: "The company is also progressing discussions with other global advertising agencies. However, giving the world's leading advertising agencies the comfort to buy and report on this new inventory takes time, and the board believes further building blocks are still required before those revenues can be fully exploited.
"While this may be frustrating for investors, the board and Bidstack's commercial partners can see evidence of positive benefit ahead for the company."
The company said the video game advertising market is set to go through a period of "substantial change" over the next five years.
"The directors believe that new console launches, the growth of cloud-gaming and e-sports, coupled with legislative restrictions affecting targeting via app and web-based advertising, should all work in Bidstack's favour," the firm added.
This year, Microsoft Corp's Xbox and Sony Corp's Playstation are pencilled in to release their latest consoles, following the Xbox One and Playstation 4 range, respectively.
By Eric Cunha; ericcunha@alliancenews.com
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