ANSEARCH LIMITED
Overview of Results and New Initiatives
ANH - Preliminary Final Report - Mr David Burden, CEO
Thu, 28 Aug 2008 01:45PM
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Mr David Burden
Thu, 28 Aug 2008
01:45PM Australia/NSW
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ANSEARCH LIMITED (ANH)
ASX code: ANH
Website: http://www.ansearchltd.com/
Industry: Software & Services
Principal Activities:
Ansearch Ltd is involved in various online media activities, including the Ansearch.com.au search engine and the Soush online media network (www.soush.com).
Address:
95 Coventry Street, Level 3
SOUTH MELBOURNE
VIC
Phone: 03 8695 9199
Fax: 03 9696 0700
Executives & Directors
Mr Andrew Barlow , Chairman, Non Exec. Director
Mr David Burden , Director, CEO
Mr Adrian Giles , Director
Dr Adrian Vanzyl , Non Exec. Director
Mr Joshua Edis , Chief Op. Officer
Mr Andrew Beecher , Chief Op. Officer
Mr Damian Element , CFO
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Company ASX Announcements
Company ASX announcements can be viewed on the ASX website.
Announcements from the preceding six months are shown below.
Please refer to the relevant stock exchange if any of the above information is incorrect
ANSEARCH LIMITED (ANH) Events
Australia/NSW
ANSEARCH LIMITED (ANH)
| Share Re-organisation | Fri, 21 Nov 2008 |
| Ansearch 5th in Deloitte Technology Fast 50 | Mon, 17 Nov 2008 |
| Appendix 3B | Mon, 17 Nov 2008 |
| Ansearch Media wins The Biggest Loser Club | Wed, 5 Nov 2008 |
| Annual Report to Shareholders Correction | Fri, 31 Oct 2008 |
| Annual Report to Shareholders | Fri, 31 Oct 2008 |
| Boardroom Radio - Ansearch Quarterly Update | Thu, 30 Oct 2008 |
| Ansearch 7th on 2008 BRW Fast 100 | Thu, 30 Oct 2008 |
| Correction to Change of Director`s Interest Notice | Wed, 29 Oct 2008 |
| Change of Director`s Interest Notice | Tue, 28 Oct 2008 |
Please note: This company appears on this website as a result of its listing on the Australian Securities Exchange. Boardroom Radio does not claim any association with any company listed on this site.
INTERVIEW WITH MR DAVID BURDEN, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, ANSEARCH LIMITED (ANH)
“ANH - Preliminary Final Report”
http://www.brr.com.au/event/50428
THURSDAY, AUGUST 28, 2008, 1:45 PM.
BRR Welcome to Boardroom Radio. Today, I’m joined by the Managing Director of Ansearch, Mr. David Burden. David, thanks for joining us today.
10 ANH Good afternoon, James.
BRR David, today Ansearch has released its 4E Report to the Australian Securities Exchange. To start off with, I’m going to ask you to talk about the high figures and touch on the financials of the company.
15 ANH Sure. Thank you very much, James. Today, we reported revenue for the financial year of $12.2 million, which was a 46% increase over last year, which we were very pleased about. We still reported a loss, however. This loss was lower than our internal forecast of -- original forecast of 4.7. We managed to bring that to $4.2 million. The loss is made up of really -- there’s
20 about $3 million of that loss was contributed before the E Team started so that was prior to February. So the new Executive Team that was appointed in February this year has worked very hard on a number of measures to reduce the cash burn of the company and put a lot of new initiatives in place for the business. So we’re quite pleased in all those efforts and as we have
25 previously stated that we strongly believe this company will be returning to a sustainable profit in this financial year. In fact, pleasingly, we did achieve a profit of $212,000 for the last month of the financial year for June, and that was made up of a number of one-offs, but I think it’s an indicator that the business is pretty close to achieving the profitable status that we require.
30
BRR Now, David, there is an extraordinary general meeting scheduled for Ansearch. You’ve completed the first tranche of your capital raising, there are two more in place. This is the purpose of the EGM, could you talk us through some of the details of this for the shareholders?
35 ANH Yes, certainly. It’s obviously not the best time to raise money. One, in the current market; and two, with our share price at a lower figure than it really -- it should be considering just on a revenue basis, but that’s life. The Board decided that we needed to press ahead and get a rig along with our initiatives that we have in place. We see some growth opportunities in the market
40 currently for growth in our organic businesses and to also launch some new business objectives. So to get moving on that, we’ve raised some cash, the first tranche of this was to some sophisticated investors who have some great interest in the vehicle and we raised $864,000 through those. The second tranche is actually going before our extraordinary general meeting on the 16th
45 of September asking shareholders’ approval for the Directors and the Executives of the business to invest $412,000 of their own money into the business at the same issue price that was given to the sophisticated investors. And tranche 3 will immediately follow the EGM and give all shareholders the opportunity to participate again at the same level as the other parties to raise that money so they can top up their holdings.
BRR And, David, I understand that you’ve been receiving some of the questions
5 about the issue of Director’s options and also your own personal short-term and long-term incentive structure. Could you put a bit of detail around this for us?
ANH Yes, certainly. The EGM is also looking at the ratification of the issue of some shares to our Directors. I’m very fortunate in the fact that I have three
10 Directors who work very, very hard in the business. At the moment, they’re probably averaging one to two days a week of work in the business and part of their plan is to issue each of the Directors (inaudible) (03:51) options as part of their remuneration scheme, they’re issued at strike price of 2 cents. And in addition to that, the incentive that was provided to myself originally
15 was the issue of 25 million options at varying prices, but effectively starting at 10 cents moving up to 30 cents. I think we’ve all realized that that’s probably a little bit out of the money and not providing either a short-term or a long-term incentive for myself to get the share price moving. And those options will be cancelled and instead the Board has offered me a loan of $200,000 to buy
20 some 2-cent shares, which we’ll vest over the next three years.
BRR All right, David, well at this stage I think I probably like to look at the operations of Ansearch beyond this level. It’s obviously for you the start of a new financial year is an exciting time. A chance to move forward with the
25 clean slate with the new direction of the company and I understand you’ve got a few new initiatives, one is just being launched with your new video search engine? But there’s also another one in the pipeline coming soon, could you talk about some of these exciting new developments at Ansearch.
ANH Yeah, thanks, James. It certainly is great to finish financial year and to be
30 able to, I suppose, clear out the previous results. It’s been an interesting six months in forms of turning this business around. I’m very pleased about the progress that was made in fixing the business and taking out some of the overheads and then moving the business back towards a profitable position. At the same time, we’ve been working on the company, we’ve also been
35 focused on new initiatives. By now our shareholders are well across all of the ones that we’ve achieved so far. Most recently, we‘ve relaunched our search engine, ansearch.com.au, and it’s out the derivatives around the world. We’ve substantially enhanced this search engine, and it now carries an organic search feed from Ask, one of the leaders in search around the world, and for
40 the first time in the region we’ve also launched a syndicated Blinkx video feed. Blinkx is the premium provider of professional video content around the world, and the new search engine provides a great way of being able to search on professional video. So we’re very excited about that and the market has, the actual search users in Australia have reacted very well to this
45 new search engine with daily numbers of searches on our own search engine is growing quite strongly. Obviously the monetization plan behind this search engine is also the search engine carries a fleet of Google advertising and we generate revenue when people click on the ads surrounding the organic search. In addition, obviously we also -- when we did a deal with Blinkx, we also did an exclusive arrangement to resell their advertising for Australian users. So when people -- when users do a Blinkx search and see a pre-roll video, that also is generating revenue for the company. And also next week, on the 1st of September, we’ll launch our new search world network. So I
5 don’t want to give too much away ahead of that but the new search world--search network will be Australia’s largest independent search advertising network and effectively, James, what we’ve found is that there’s about between 160 million and 200 million Australian searches that occur on the T2 and T3 search networks around the world. We’ve aggregated these together
10 and in our research we found there were not too many Australian advertisers that were monetizing these searches. So we’re giving advertisers the ability to really for a very low cost, get access to those Australian users in comparison to say a Google or a Yahoo price that you’ll have to pay for relevant keyword searching on their engine. So we’re very excited about that launch next week.
15
BRR All right, David. Well, first of all, congratulations on the first closing of the financial year for Ansearch, but more importantly we look forward to following the developments at Ansearch in the year ahead and a full financial year at the helm.
20 ANH Yeah, thanks very much James. We’re certainly looking forward to an exciting time over the next 12 months.
INTERVIEW CONCLUDED
Contact brr@brr.com.au for more information
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