WANdisco ends year in line, raises $17.5m

Data company WANdisco announced the subscription of 2,489,499 new ordinary shares by existing shareholders on Thursday, at a price of 546p per share, raising gross proceeds of around $17.5m.

The AIM-traded firm said that represented 5.85% of its entire existing share capital, with the subscription shares being issued under its existing authorities.

It said the proceeds would be used to support its relationships with strategic cloud partners, and provide growth working capital.

WANdisco also updated the market on its trading for the 2018 financial year, saying revenues were expected to be in line with the board’s expectations.

The company said it had a “strong” end to the year, winning contracts across a variety of end-markets and partners, including through Microsoft, IBM and Amazon Web Services.

It said that increasingly, such contracts were subscription-based, with the opportunity to scale the annualised value of recurring revenues over time.

The company said it anticipated a cash balance of around $10.7m as at 31 December.

“In 2018 we planned to expand our partner ecosystem and fully leverage the power of this sales model, while carefully controlling our costs,” said chief executive officer David Richards.

“Our momentum in the second half has continued into January and our sales pipeline is the largest in the company's history.”

Richards said that gave him confidence in the firm’s prospects for 2019 and beyond.

“The $17.5m placing announced today is an excellent example of the group's momentum, providing us with additional funding to leverage a number of significant opportunities to expand our existing partner relationships.”