LONDON (Alliance News) - Arria NLG PLC on Wednesday reported a widened pretax loss in the first half of its financial year, as revenue was hit by the loss of its contract with Royal Dutch Shell PLC last year, but Arria said it continued to make good progress in delivering its strategic plan.
The natural language generation technology company reported a pretax loss of GBP8.4 million for the half year to end-March, widened from a pretax loss of GBP2.7 million a year before, mostly as a result of a GBP3.4 million finance expense related to a loss suffered on a derivative asset.
Revenue fell to GBP226,000 from GBP904,000, after the company's key contract with Shell was terminated in April 2015.
During the period, Arria NLG set into motion a new product launch initiative, launching software-as-a-service product Recount in the first half and targeting the launch of software development kit SDK Developer Cloud in its second half.
Elsewhere, it inked a partnership agreement with Genpact Inc, and secured a further three patents, taking its total patent portfolio to seven. Since the half year ended, it has secured a further two patents, Arria NLG said.
"We have continued to make good and steady progress across the first half of the financial year in delivering the company's strategic plan. In addition to growing new strategic relationships with large companies such as Genpact, and continuing to develop our valuable and growing portfolio of patents, we have invested in future growth by creating further business lines," said Chairman and Chief Executive Stuart Rogers in a statement.
"We believe that we remain well positioned to take advantage of the business trends currently being seen and where ever-challenging business needs are met by new and innovative Artificial Intelligence technologies such as ours which our shareholders have helped us bring to the market," Rogers added.
Last Friday, the company said it was well advanced in its plans to list on both the New Zealand Stock Exchange and Australian Securities Exchange, in addition to London, and as part of these listings plans to raise additional funds.
Shares in Arria NLG were up 2.0% at 19.50 pence Wednesday.
By Hana Stewart-Smith; hanassmith@alliancenews.com; @HanaSSAllNews
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