Mobile payments firm Monitise has pulled plans to sell MyVoucherCodes.co.uk, causing its shares to drop some 7% when the announcement was made yesterday.
The group stated in March that it had drawn up plans to sell the incentive publisher’s parent firm, Marko Media, following its purchase for £55 million in July 2014, which led to a ‘difficult’ period in which the company on the whole was “growing too big too fast”.
This culminated in the writing off of £126.5 million aimed at restructuring the business and the decision to put itself up for sale briefly in 2015.
The latest announcement created a brief turnaround on an otherwise dismal two years for Monitise share prices, but the company has now claimed in an official statement that “greater shareholder value” can be delivered by retaining the business.
“The company will continue to regularly evaluate all assets within the Monitise group to ensure that long-term shareholder value is maximised,” it added.
Another setback
This latest u-turn could well be a setback for Monetise’s plans to turn a profit by the second half of the year.
CEO Lee Cameron is aiming to reduce outgoings through “stabilising and restructuring”, and has set an expenditure target of £3 million per month in the second half of 2016.
Since taking the helm of the company in September, Cameron has pledged that it was “absolutely” not his expectation that there will be any more reductions in the valuation of Monitise, whose market capital now sits at approximately £66 million.
“The business is sufficiently well funded to meet its future plans,” said Monitise, which claims some confidence due to its rolling out of cloud-based technology Finkit, geared at financial groups and their building of new solutions.