Sharechat Logo

Terabyte writedown knocks ITC result

By Phil Boeyen, ShareChat Business News Editor

Friday 15th June 2001

Text too small?
Tech investor IT Capital (NZSE: ITC) has written down its investment in Terabyte by $4.7 million due to a slowdown in the New Zealand multi-media market.

The write-down has contributed to a loss of $4.96 million for ITC for the year ended March, and compares with last year's $3.25 million deficit.

ITC has been unable to deliver much promising news in its latest result, although CEO Jeff Dittus says the company performed strongly during the year with the successful $12.3 million sale of exo-net to Australian tech company Solution 6.

However that deal - which helped the company to an interim profit of $4.85 million six months ago - was not rewarded by the market, which promptly slammed the shares after the sale was announced.

The company's executive chairman, John Robertson, says the latest loss is disappointing, however the board decided to bear the full brunt of the Terabyte writedown to allow the financial benefits of restructuring the interactive communication solutions firm to come through immediately.

"The outlook for Terabyte is positive with strong revenue forecast from the growing interactive learning market, complementing revenue streams from business solutions such as intranet and website development.

"A revised business model will enable Terabyte to scale up and take on large projects."

Like most tech investors ITC has been treading carefully over further investments, although it did plug another million dollars into Virtual Spectator during the year.

In April it also announced it had acquired a 23.5% stake in solutions development company, Streamlink, for $2 million.

The company is also continuing to make favourable noises about its Deep Video Imaging investment, which produces innovative 3D liquid crystal display screens, but the tone of the latest result comes over as rather taciturn compared with previous banter.

"Overall, the result is in line with expectations for a second-year venture capital firm building a solid platform for growth," says Mr Robertson.

ITC says its chief financial officer and executive vice president, who now operate out of Sydney, are continuing to try to attract investment partners for its range of portfolio companies.

  General Finance Advertising    

Comments from our readers

No comments yet

Add your comment:
Your name:
Your email:
Not displayed to the public
Comment:
Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved.