It's nearly two and a half years since cloud hosted comms and enterprise solutions business Outsourcery joined AIM amid much fanfare. Founded and led by Dragon's Den'er Piers Linney, this was a small UK tech business that was going to go places fast, and it talked institutions into handed over £13 million at its IPO, priced at 110p per share.

A swathe of strategic partnerships quickly followed, and so did the cash calls, as losses mounted and growth remained elusive.

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Piers Linney

Nearly 30 months later and nothing much has changed, except the share price and expectations. Its near £34 million market cap at IPO has shrunk disastrously and, at today's 15.5p (after another 3% decline), the company is worth just £7.3 million.

Today's interims are frustratingly, meh! Sure, revenues up 20% seems decent, yet that's just 5% progress versus the second half of 2014, there's a bit of gross margin growth to 49.2%, which given the largely flat operating costs means EBITDA losses were cut by 26%.

OUT

Yet this remains a business that is still burning through relatively large chunks of cash, £1.3 million nearly in the six months to 30 June. And recurring revenues are flatlining at just 17% of the £4.1 million total.

'Outsourcery will this year do barely a third of the £24.4 million revenues forecast prior to the IPO,' points out Megabuyte's Philip Carse.

Cue another swathe of forecast cuts, Investec has slashed its full year revenues estimate from £ 11.1 million to £8.5 million, basically confirming little improvement in the second half. At the same time the investment bank has also hiked 2016 EBITDA losses from £1.5 million to £4 million.

Needing to be bailed out by an emergency £4 million loan from Vodafone (VOD) in July, and with substantial EBITDA losses still on the horizon, expect Outsourcery to have the cap out again soon.

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Issue Date: 29 Sep 2015