Earthport Regulatory News (EPO)

14 Dec 2005 10:31

Earthport PLC14 December 2005 earthport plc ("earthport" or the "Company") Completion of Chairman's Review The Chairman's review of the Company's activities, announced on 2nd June 2005,has been completed. earthport has been restructured and its strategy andactivities realigned as set out below: Balance sheet restructuring As previously announced, the balance sheet has been strengthened by replacing£4.0m of secured loans and unsecured finance leases with a £1.25m secured loanfacility, repayable over five years. Obligations have thus, through negotiation,been reduced by £2.75million and extended to a longer maturity. In addition£3.2million of Loan Stock presently on the balance sheet will convertautomatically into equity before 30 June 2006. Fundraising Also as previously announced, following the EGM, earthport has raised £4.5million of equity funding. The Directors believe that earthport now has anappropriate financing strategy in place to take it to and past cash neutrality. Litigation All litigation has been resolved with the possible exception of mattersconcerning Mr Cunningham's dismissal. Sales and Marketing A new sales and marketing team has been recruited to focus on winning businessthat maximises the Company's key strengths. These are the global bankingnetwork, comprising 35 local territory accounts which provide the ability tocollect and pay out funds in more than 120 territories, and the software whichmanages the network; which together make up the Universal Payment Network (UPN). The sales team, led by Matt O'Donnell, is now concentrating on providinginfrastructure payment services in the following key sectors: insurance; foreignexchange; payment service providers; and send money home services. Inparticular, earthport, as a Founder Member and Stakeholder in the InternationalAssociation of Money Transfer Networks, is committed to servicing the MoneyTransfer Operators and their consumers through the provision of the UPN. The sales team has been active only since the beginning of October and newclients have already been won including: Compass Intermediaries; DataCash;Kurdistan Development Corporation, InstaMoney, Desklink Office FurnitureLimited, FX auctions, Ezybonds and 5 Star mobile phone imports. The earthport website has been redesigned to reflect the Company's new directionand will be released shortly. The marketing team, led by Nick Dunlop, issourcing new business and positioning earthport as the independent utility ofchoice for the payment and collection of funds for national and global moneymovement applications. Technical Noel Jones who was Technical Adviser to the Board has now consolidated hisposition within earthport as Chief Technical Officer. He leads a strong team,which is improving the technical offering, already robust and reliable, to bescalable and ready to receive the impending increases in transaction flow whichwill result from the sales and marketing drive. ensurePay In addition ensurePay, the existing business division, handling online gamingcustomers, continues to provide revenues under the direction of Mark Burbidgeand new contracts have been agreed with Betfair, Ladbrokes and Proc-Cyber. earthport Chairman Mike Harrison said, "I am pleased with the results of thereview, we have been able to focus the Company on its core businessopportunities: build a sound financial basis to exploit these opportunities; andput in place a new sales and marketing team who are already yielding significantresults after only a couple of months. We look forward to the future withconfidence." -End- Press enquiries: Mike Harrison Chairman - earthport plc +44 20 7220 9700 David Nabarro/Jonathan Naess - Nabarro Wells +44 20 7710 7400 This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange