19 Jan 2017 07:00
19 January 2017
Arria NLG plc
("Arria NLG" or the "Company")
Company update
Arria NLG (AIM: NLG), a leader in Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Generation ("NLG"), is pleased to provide the following updates ahead of the cancellation of the Company's ordinary shares ("Ordinary Shares") and quoted warrants ("Warrants") from trading on AIM. The last day of trading in the Ordinary Shares and Warrants on AIM is today and they will be cancelled on AIM with effect from 07:00 a.m. tomorrow, 20 January 2017 ("Cancellation").
As Arria NLG progresses the proposed transition of its public listing from AIM to the New Zealand Stock Exchange Main Boards ("NZX') and (Australian Stock Exchange Main Board "ASX"), the Company is committed to keeping its shareholders informed and up-to-date with regularly scheduled announcements throughout the transition. These announcements will be made via the Company's website and via email to subscribers of ARRIA NLG INVESTOR NEWS. To subscribe, please go to http://info.arria.com/investor-news-sign-up
The Board of Arria believe the transition from AIM to the NZX and ASX stock exchanges will offer the market support needed to realize the full value of Arria NLG's stock.
Please also visit the Company's website for more information on the Company's stock and status after the AIM cancellation https://www.arria.com/investor-center/
Details of a proposed matched bargaining trading facility to allow Arria NLG shareholders to effect transactions in Arria NLG Ordinary Shares following Cancellation will be provided on the Company's website in due course.
UPDATE ON PRE-IPO CAPITAL RAISE
As previously announced, in advance of the proposed NZX/ASX Listings, Arria NLG appointed Rainmaker Securities, a Chicago-based registered broker-dealer that specializes in sourcing capital for growth issuers, particularly in the technology sector, to assist in a US private offering to accredited investors as part of the IPO Pre-Subscription Offer of $25 million.
The IPO Pre-Subscription Offer consists of the issue of short-term notes that convert to shares and options of Arria NLG Limited upon listing on NZX in consideration of a minimum investment per investor of the New Zealand dollar equivalent of US $500,000. The Pre-Subscription offer was set at NZ $1.00 per Offer Bundle ("Bundle"). The Bundle includes 1 ordinary share and 2 share options.
Rainmaker Securities has reported they are well progressed with over 20 investment firms that are now in a due diligence phase and expect to complete the offer in Q1 2017.
UPDATE ON ARRIA NLG'S SALES EXPANSION
Arria NLG welcomes the anticipated expansion of its US investor base as Arria NLG's 2017 plan calls for further expansion of its footprint and client base in the USA. Arria NLG is off to a strong start to 2017 with the recent signing of contracts with Accenture, IBM, Pepsi, and Samsung.
Arria NLG now globally deploys NLG technology through 3 diversified channels: Licensing of custom applications to enterprise clients, SaaS Products including Recount and Articulator Lite, and licensing of the Articulator Pro Developer Tools. Arria recently appointed Jay DeWalt to fill the role of US-based Senior Vice President of Global Sales. Jay DeWalt has extensive experience in multiple business functions including global sales and business development leadership for Metalogix and EMC Corporation as well as other leading software firms. Jay brings to Arria his ability to build global partner ecosystems, regional and global alliances and channel partnerships. Jay will operate out of Arria's US East Coast office.
UPDATE ON ARRIA NLG'S TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT EXPANSION
Arria NLG maintains support offices in both New Zealand and Australia and has established its second NLG development center in Sydney.
Arria NLG's primary software development hub is in Aberdeen, UK; but since mid-2015, the Company has been building up a development team in Sydney, Australia. Headed up by Dr Robert Dale, Arria NLG's Chief Technology Officer, the Sydney lab is now home to 20 developers and associated staff. Housed in the Surry Hills area, home to many IT start-ups, the Sydney team has the rich multinational mix you'd hope for in a company obsessed with language, with Australia, China, Estonia, Germany, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, the UK and USA all being represented.
Whereas the Aberdeen team focusses on building platform applications and further enhancing the Articulator Pro toolset, the Sydney team is responsible for our cloud-based offerings: Articulator Lite, the Company's easy-to-use browser-based NLG development tool, and Recount, the SaaS add-on for popular accounting packages that provides insightful narrative analysis around a company's financial information. Both products have been under intense development over the last year, and are now in beta.
Arria NLG often draws client's attention to the ability of NLG applications to automate report generation 24/7; the software never sleeps. With the Company's antipodean team distribution, Arria NLG's software development processes is also able to provide support whenever it's needed.
ARRIA NLG'S GROWING PATENT PORTFOLIO
Arria NLG's leadership in NLG science is increasingly reflected in its growing patent portfolio, which covers both core NLG technologies such as configurable microplanning (US Patent 9,135,244 issued September 15, 2015) and features and enhancements that make Arria's NLG Platform more powerful, for example, referring expression generation (US Patent 9,355,093 Issued May 31, 2016).
During 2016, Arria received five US patents on its NLG technologies, supplementing five previously granted US patents and one US patent allowance so far in 2017, for a total to date of eleven US patents. In 2016, Arria filed and continues to prosecute a significant number of additional patent applications, and to date none of Arria's patent applications have failed to produce an issued patent.
Late in 2016, the emphasis of the Company's ongoing patent application efforts began to shift from its earlier focus on innovations that arose from custom NLG applications developed for enterprise clients to innovations that arise from the Company's new emphasis on launching and supporting SaaS products. The Recount, Articulator Lite and Articulator Pro products in their SaaS embodiments each embody innovations that are being captured in patent applications.
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY DEVELOPMENTS IN THE NLG FIELD
LITIGATION
In 2016 the first US litigation in the NLG patent field was resolved. In a lawsuit involving two competitors of Arria NLG, O2 Media, LLC v. Narrative Science Inc., 149 F.Supp.3d 984 (N.D. Ill. 2016), the United States District Court determined that O2 Media's three business method patents asserting NLG claims were unenforceable against alleged infringement by Narrative Science.
The lawsuit was significant both as a milestone in the development of the NLG market, where patent litigation is a sign of the commercial importance of emerging technology, and also for the court's invocation against the O2 Media patents of the statutory bar on patenting of abstract ideas. From its first patenting efforts in 2012, Arria has filed patent claims asserting only its most substantial and practical contributions to NLG technology, a policy that has fared well at the US Patent and Trademark Office. Unlike many thousands of software patents and patent applications that have been rejected at the patent office or in the courts on the basis of tightening patentability standards, none of Arria's patent applications have failed the patent office's test of subject matter validity, and the company believes that it will be well positioned in any future offensive or defensive litigation involving its patent portfolio.
INDUSTRY STANDARDS
In regard to NLG technology generally, the Company has planned its intellectual property development with an eye to favourably positioning its patent portfolio in relation to emerging standards in both NLG technology and industry verticals adopting NLG solutions. In examples as diverse as permitted data sharing among competitors and interoperability standards for mobile computing, time and again those new market entrants who have acquired patents for the most critical technology enjoy the strongest competitive position as the market matures. Standards arise, whether spontaneously through competition or by industry arrangements such as data sharing or interoperability standards.
Already Arria NLG is seeing the first evidence of how its patent portfolio may shape the future NLG market, setting standards by which its competitors will be gauged and contributing NLG technology to best practices within industry verticals. The Company's effort to integrate its intellectual property development and licensing programs with technology development and marketing is intended to position Arria NLG for future dominance in the NLG field.
For further information, please visit www.arria.com or contact:
Arria NLG plc
Chair and Interim Chief Executive - Sharon Daniels Tel +1 212-252-2185
Allenby Capital (Nominated Adviser & Joint Broker)
Nick Naylor/Jeremy Porter/James Reeve Tel: +44 (0)20 3328 5656
MSL Capital Markets (Lead Manager)
Andrew McDouall/Justine Dunnett/Peter Lynds Tel: +64 (0)4 472 2716
Rainmaker Securities LLC (US broker/dealer) Tel: + 1(312) 254-5048
500 N. Michigan Avenue, Suite 600
Chicago, IL 60611
Glen Anderson - ganderson@rainmakersecurities.com
Stuart Sugarman - ssugarman@rainmakersecurities.com
Stockdale Securities (Joint Broker)
Antonio Bossi/Robert Finlay Tel: +44 (0)20 7601 6100
IFC Advisory (Financial PR and IR)
Tim Metcalfe/Graham Herring/Heather Armstrong Tel: +44 (0)20 3053 8671
tim.metcalfe@investor-focus.co.uk
graham.herring@investor-focus.co.uk
heather.armstrong@investor-focus.co.uk
Ruder Finn (PR USA)
Scott Beaver (West Coast) Tel: +1 541-326-5847
Brianna Mulligan (East Coast) Tel: +1 203-246-1304
Arria NLG plc
The Arria Group's core product is known as the Arria NLG Platform, a form of artificial intelligence software, specialised in extracting information from complex data sources and communicating that information in natural language (i.e. as if written by a human). The scientific foundation for the Arria NLG Platform is based on more than 30 years of research and development by the Arria Data2Text Limited founders at the University of Aberdeen.
For additional information, visit www.arria.com. Follow Arria NLG on Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube.