Maestrano crumbles after warning on revenue and losses

Maestrano plummeted on Tuesday after the company warned that its full-year revenue and loss before tax will be "materially behind market expectations".

For the six-month period ended 31 December, the cloud business integration platform reported revenue of £0.4m, up by 29% on the same period of the year before, while loss before tax increased by 85% to £1.3m as employee expenses increased by 77% to £1.4m and professional fees jumped by 530% to £0.3m.

Following the results and detailed planning discussions with its major USA bank client, the AIM-listed company said it was planning a more cautious approach to the ramp-up of end-user subscription revenue for 2019.

A statement from Maestrano said: "This cautious approach is expected to result in revenue and the adjusted loss for the 2019 financial year being materially behind market expectations. Notwithstanding end-user uptake taking longer than anticipated, the company's business model remains the same and the board remains extremely confident that the bank will achieve its planned end-user targets over the next three years."

By reducing the number of users who have visibility of the platform, Maestrano said its is subscribing to a "do it slow, get it right" philosophy in order to ensure that the data presented to customers is complete and relevant, resulting in an experience that exceeds their expectations.

At 31 December, the company had cash and cash equivalents of £3.8m, up from £0.9m at the same point the year before.

Andrew Pearson, chief executive of Maestrano, said: "Maestrano's platform provide the tools for mature market players to rapidly pull together information and solutions from multiple internal systems and customer applications. Similarly, the Maestrano platform allows newer entrants to draw together newer applications to expedite market entry. As a result, we are very confident of Maestrano's longer term success in this large global market."

Maestrano's shares were down 36.77% at 4.83p at 1102 GMT.