WAND.L Share News (WAND)

(Sharecast News) - Data technology company WANdisco reported first-half revenue of $3.6m (£2.78m) on Thursday, down from $6m year-on-year.
The AIM-traded firm said its cash overheads rose to $17.9m for the six months ended 30 June, from $15.5m a year earlier, as its adjusted EBITDA loss widened to $11.9m from $7.6m.

It recorded an operating loss of $17.7m for the period, compared to $16.5m in the first half of 2019, while cash at period end stood at $33.6m, up from $23.4m at the start of the year.

The company's debt married to $1.4m, from $2.2m as at 31 December.

WANdisco raised gross proceeds of $25m during the period, through an oversubscribed placing, to accelerate its growth plans and to pursue near-term opportunities with channel partners.

"Today, we proudly announced the launch of 'LiveData Migrator' on the Amazon web Services (AWS) platform and as the business alluded to in our recent fundraise, we have strengthened our strategic relationship with AWS and see a building pipeline of customers on the platform," said chief executive officer David Richards.

"With the formal launch of our new LiveData Migrator product, we became the only independent software vendor to achieve competency status in the revamped migration category and have already secured GoDaddy as the first customer.

"The business remains focused on capitalising on opportunities with AWS, Microsoft and other tier 1 partners as our relationships continue to deepen."

Richards said that in the first half, WANdisco continued to "fortify" its partnership with Microsoft through the creation of a new core service, the LiveData Platform for Azure.

He said deepening those relationships with cloud partners remained the firm's primary strategic goal, positioning it for "significant" scalable growth.

The board said it expected the LiveData platform to become publicly available as a metered service in the coming weeks.

"In the period, the group secured a significant reseller agreement with a large global systems integrator who has relationships with many Global 200 companies as a provider of cloud integration services.

"We have also signed significant initial contracts with a large media company and British supermarket chain," Richards said.

He added that, with the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, the company had seen an accelerated business shift towards the cloud, as companies looked to take advantage of its "agility and scalability".

"The board remains confident that while revenue in the 2020 financial year will be below expectations, the combination of our market opportunity, product readiness, and deepening commitments from cloud partners provides a strong platform to deliver significant revenue growth in the 2021 financial year, with the board expecting a minimum revenue of $35 million."

At 1635 BST, shares in WANdisco were down 26.83% at 420p.