Cellcast cuts losses and reviews options amid falling revenue

Cellcast's shares jumped on Tuesday as the company cut its annual loss on the back of lower costs, though the group is reviewing its prospects as operating revenues dipped and the interactive broadcast business declined.

The broadcast and gaming outfit scored a loss before taxes of £0.3m for 2018, marking an improvement over the £0.6m of red ink booked the year before, after its cost of sales dropped by 2% to £11.0m and operating costs and expenses declined by 14% to £0.6m.

However, total revenue dipped by 6% to £11.3m as revenues at the company's interactive broadcast unit shrank by 4% to £10.9m, with the AIM traded company having searched for suitable partners in order to expand and diversify the business but failing, "despite numerous attempts".

Mike Neville, chairman of Cellcast, said: "We continued to see the gradual decline in the core interactive broadcast business that we have witnessed for the past few years. This has continued in 2019 year to date. In addition, due to the adverse effect of a new taxation rate for the group's clients in Kenya, we also saw reduced fees for our technical and consultancy services to overseas gaming and lottery operators."

Neville added that there has consequently been an increased focus on the long-term viability of the group's economic model, with the directors currently undertaking a review of the business' prospects going forward.

As online revenues grew by 15% in 2018 to £4.5m, the group is in the process of further optimising its online properties to improve its performance further, though it admits that the potential of this is impacted by uncertainty regarding the implementation of the government's online content verification programmes.

Cellcast's shares were up 14.71% at 0.98p at 1220 BST.