Crowd Media ‘positioned better than ever’ to deliver its growth plans
Crowd Media anticipates the $5 million will fund its operations for more than two-and-a-half years based on its current expenditure rate.
Crowd Media Holdings (ASX: CM8) has revealed it is “positioned better than ever” in its chairman’s half year update – ending the period with $5 million in cash, which it says will bankroll its operations for at least another two years.
The two-and-a-half year funding estimate for the $5 million is based on the company’s current expenditure rate, with outflows totalling $1.2 million for the period. This was an 21% improvement on the previous H1 2020.
As well as reducing operating outflows, Crowd extinguished its “unfriendly” BillFront debt – decreasing its borrowings from $3.5 million at the end of June 2020 to $1.7 million.
Meanwhile, working capital was boosted from $300,000 to $2 million. Net tangible asset backing per share grew by a factor of 11.75 – rising from $0.08 per share in H1 2020 to $0.94 in H1 2021.
During the same period, Crowd’s share price increased from $0.019 to $0.056.
Crowd has attributed its strong position to a “relentless focus on agility” as it adapts its legacy business model to the changing environment without compromising its strategy to develop its Talking Head artificial intelligence platform for conversational commerce.
“We have assembled an execution team to drive our Talking Head vision to commercialisation,” Crowd chairman Steven Schapera said.
“With Aflorithmic, Forever Holdings, VFR Assets and Holdings and UnneeQ at our table, I believe we have market-leading partners and have strengthened our position substantially,” he added.
Talking Heads platform
As part of Crowd’s Talking Head strategy, it has secured a 10% interest in Aflorithmic for $1.773 million, with Aflorithmic to gain a 1.3% stake in Crowd in return.
The deal allows Crowd to integrate its own AI Q&A Chatbox technology with Aflorithmic’s voice cloning technology.
These will then be worked in with VRF’s video technology.
It is expected once these capabilities have been integrated, they will underpin Crowd’s Talking Head platform which combines sight, sound and real-time conversation to “deliver an immersive experience”.