Shareholder update

Posted: 13/12/2017

Forbidden is today providing it shareholders with an update on the progress of its business.

Introduction

In September 2017 Ian McDonough joined Forbidden as the Company’s Chief Executive Officer. Ian’s appointment followed the previous Chief Executive Officer leaving the Company in February 2017.

Since his appointment, Ian has made an in-depth review of the Company’s business and has already made significant progress against a new set of priorities. These priorities include:

a) building Forbidden’s strategy, capabilities and commercial focus around the Company’s core patented technology Blackbird™️;

b) engaging directly with the Company’s existing customers across North America and in the UK and having discussions with prospects on both sides of the Atlantic;

c) implementing and progressing Proofs of Concept (“PoCs”), in line with the Company’s new strategy; and

d) replacing most of the Company’ sales and marketing team.

Blackbird

Blackbird is the visionary piece of patented video technology that differentiates Forscene. Invented and developed by Stephen Streater, Blackbird is a high-performance video codec. It provides a responsive viewing experience and frame accurate manipulation of content from multiple locations across the media supply chain. Blackbird runs effectively in the cloud, on premises and in hybrid solutions.

Surrounding Blackbird is a suite of microservices that take advantage of this patented technology. The Company’s video platform, Forscene, helps solve many of the challenges and opens up new opportunities that companies are looking for with their live, non-live and archived content. Forscene can be integrated into existing and developing media supply chains.

Customers

The Company is now talking to customers about how Forbidden can increase speed to market, reduce hardware footprint, provide better video content visibility and contribute to media distribution in a continuously evolving digital landscape. This has led the Company to focus on its primary commercial objective of integrating Blackbird as an infrastructure component in the media supply chain. These infrastructure sales have far more financial potential although have longer sale cycles.

Forbidden’s customers include MSG Networks, Viacom, Envy, Deltatre, IMG, Gfinity and the BBC. Other major clients and household name sports leagues and brands are covered by Non-Disclosure Agreements.

Sales and marketing

The Company is actively recruiting sales personnel for both the UK and North America to align with Forbidden’s new direction. This new team will report to the Sales Director who joined the Company in July 2017. A new senior Marketing Manager has already been engaged. Forbidden is also looking to extend its reseller efforts to the West Coast USA and Latin America.

Trading update

As a result of the significant management changes this year, and the longer infrastructure sale cycle, the financial results for the year ending 31 December 2017 will be below last year.

However, as noted above, in the past few months the Company has signed a number of exciting new PoCs in multiple regions and new sectors. This means that the Company now has the most PoCs it has ever had at any one time.

The extended PoC which we announced on 19(th) April 2017 has come to an end. The workflow which the PoC had envisaged was unfortunately not adopted. However, we were able to raise the profile of Forbidden within the broadcaster.

Ian McDonough, Chief Executive Officer of Forbidden, today said:

“My customer visits have highlighted the challenges and opportunities the industry has as it undergoes digital transformation. Feedback from both customers and prospects is unanimous – the Blackbird(TM) video technology should be a game changer within the industry – and reaffirms my core reason for joining Forbidden as CEO. There is a lot of work to be done, to tackle both the lack of sales and the fact that the Company has been under-selling its technology. I relish the challenge.

“These are exciting times at Forbidden Technologies and I look forward to keeping shareholders up-to-date in the new year.”

Enquiries

Forbidden Technologies plc
Ian McDonough, CEO
Jonathan Lees, Finance Director
Tel: +44 (0)20 8879 7245

Allenby Capital Limited (Nominated Adviser and Broker)
Nick Naylor
John Depasquale
Katrina Perez
Tel: +44 (0)20 3328 5656

About Forbidden Technologies plc

Forbidden Technologies plc (AIM: FBT, www.forbidden.co.uk) floated in February 2000.

Forbidden develops, markets and licenses a powerful cloud video platform using our patented Blackbird technology. The technology underpins multiple applications which are used by rights holders, broadcasters, sports and news video specialists, post-production houses, other mass market digital video channels and corporations.

The Blackbird technology allows full visibility on multi-location digital content, improves time to market for live content such as video clips and highlights for social media distribution, and results in much more effective monetisation.

Blackbird™️ is a trademark of Forbidden Technologies plc.

Websites
www.forbidden.co.uk
www.forscene.com

Social media
https://twitter.com/forbiddentech
https://www.linkedin.com/company/116180/
https://www.facebook.com/ForbiddenTechnologies
https://twitter.com/forscenepro
www.linkedin.com/company/forscene
www.facebook.com/FORscene
www.youtube.com/user/ForsceneTraining