(Alliance News) - Yolo Leisure & Technology PLC on Tuesday said its loss narrowed in its most recent financial year as a result of substantial unrealised losses the year before, though it did record a sizeable impairment.
Shares in Yolo Leisure & Technology were down 8.3% at 11.00 pence in London at midday.
For its financial year ended September 30, Yolo posted a GBP731,784 pretax loss, a notable improvement on the GBP1.1 million loss reported the year before.
The difference results almost entirely from a very steep drop in unrealised losses on remeasurement to fair value to GBP52,930 from the much higher figure of GBP841,489 the year before.
More negatively, the firm - which invests in technology, travel, leisure, and media - incurred a GBP446,974 impairment loss on investments during its year, compared to no such impairment the year before.
Looking ahead, Yolo said its board is continuing to pursue and evaluate new investment opportunities, having altered its investment strategy to focus particularly on technology opportunities within big data, machine learning, telematics and the internet of things
At the start of November, the company announced that John Taylor had "provisionally agreed to join the board" as chair, having most recently worked on the reverse takeover between Bidstack Group PLC - formerly the cash shell Kin Group PLC - and software firm Bidstack Ltd. He was to join alongside Donald Stewart, who also worked on the deal and would be made non-executive director. Current chair, Simon Robinson, would then step down.
As well as the board changes, Yolo said it was also planning to change its name to Asimilar Group PLC and would hold a general meeting to vote on the new name.
No mention of the name change or the board changes were made in Yolo's annual statement.
Chair Simon Robinson said: "As a board we take active positions within our investment companies so that we can partner and proactively support our investee founders and boards, in their strategy and business plan execution, thereby seeking to grow and optimise our investments for shareholders. As an investment business, we are dependent on the investee companies successfully executing their business plans and managing a positive exit for our investment and investors, which sometimes take longer than initially envisaged.
"The board has evaluated a number of options to maintain positive momentum and capitalise on new opportunities in the market that we believe are in the best interests of shareholders."
By Anna Farley; annafarley@alliancenews.com
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