QXL All Sold Out

The online auction site QXL is shutting its doors.

As of May 9 it will not accept any more listings. After May 30th it closes. And so it ends. Or not. Because this news only applies to the UK.

In December 2007 QXL was sold for £946m (at £18 per share) to Naspers, a subsidiary of a media company based in South Africa, and changed its name to Tradus. And Tradus is still operating. In Eastern Europe it’s a real brand: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Norway, Romania, Russia, Poland, Slovakia, Switzerland and Ukraine all do QXL. In March 2008, Tradus also acquired Moonfish Media, which operates online auction and classified businesses in Estonia and Lithuania. QXL Ricardo of Poland is exceptionally strong.

So, in many markets where English is not the automatic second language the QXL auction will continue. What a strange life this web brand has had.

EBTM Confirms First Profits

Online Fashion Retailer EBTM has confirmed a first annual pre-tax profit for yearly trading. Chief executive Richard Breeden says the company, which lost £661,570 in the year to April 2007 on £1.3 million turnover, will ‘report a maiden full-year profit before tax’ for 2007/08.

The London-based, AIM-quoted company, which wholesales on the internet, paid £4.75 million in cash and shares last June for the ‘complementary’ Lowlife clothing and accessories brand.

Upbeat Update from Intelek

Electronic communications systems specialist Intelek (AIM: ITK) is reporting that underlying profits will ‘comfortably’ exceed market expectations.

The AIM-quoted company, which made £5.6 million pre-tax profit in the year to March 2007 on £37 million turnover, supplies electronic systems for satellite and microwave communications, as well as precision parts for the aerospace market, reports progress throughout its divisions.

Based in Swindon, Intelek, increased ‘underlying’ pre-tax profits 45 per cent to £1.48 million in the six months to September and now says ‘strong trading’ continued throughout the financial year to last month.

A bright light stock during these dark days. Worth looking over.

Braveheart Helps Spiral Gateway to Market

GrowthBusiness.co.uk is reporting that Edinburgh-based computer processing technology developer Spiral Gateway has secured over £700,000 of funding from a consortium headed by technology-focused financier Braveheart.

Braveheart was joined in the syndicate by Imperial Innovations, Bank of Scotland Corporate and the Scottish Co-investment Fund.

Spiral’s core product helps computers to process multimedia, wireless and broadband tasks. It aims to incorporate its technology on to silicon chips and will initially target the image signal processing market, a function required in every camera-enabled mobile phone.

Founded in 2004, the company was a tech spin-out from Edinburgh University. It has a licence with the institution for the rights to its reconfigurable instruction cell architecture technology. It recently released a silicon-based prototype of the technology to market its product to the image signal processing market.

Technology IPOs On Hold

It’s been a slow start on the AIM and Plus Markets for IPOs in 2008, in single digits monthly and only a couple of tech start-ups amongst them.

And it appears that over the pond in Silicon Valley the same slowdown is taking place - just one in the first quarter - ArcSight (ARST), which makes security and compliance software. For the same period last year the score was nine startups.

Where IPO is stagnant M&A seems to be taking up some of the slack, but this is displacement activity. Everyone knows there is a whole heap of ideas waiting for take-off but until the money men sort themselves out it would seem we’re all just going to have to keep surfing youtube for kitteh videos.

Optilan MBO

NVM Private Equity has backed the management buy-out (MBO) of Coventry-based telecoms network provider Optilan. The firm has invested more than £5 million in the MBO, which is led by Optilan’s CEO and co-founder Richard Buckland.

Optilan designs, installs and maintains telecoms systems for the oil and gas, transport, power and utilities industries. These are sectors with long lead-time for investments and where markets remain relatively strong. A good combination.

The company has 200 employees, the majority of whom are engineering and technical staff, and satellite offices in Moscow and Qatar.

In addition, news that NVM has exited Technology for Business, a Hampshire-based provider of IT systems for law firms.

PAQ Your Laptop

Growth Business Investor is reporting that PAQ International has raised £1 million on AIM.

PAQ is a Chinese manufacturer of own-brand bags for mobile phones and laptops. The company also supplies its products to companies such as luggage brand Samsonite and French supermarket Leclerc. The funding is earmarked to help move the company further into the retail retail outlets inside or close to major electronics stores.

Chief executive Kelvin Yau saying that they hope to acquire other manufacturing and distribution businesses in China, as well as developing a retail business in territories including China and the UK. The company intends to position its
Nomad and broker Zimmerman Adams led the fundraising, with Hichen Harrison’s assistance as co-broker.

The company’s audited turnover for 2006 was HK$22.4 million (£1.4 million) with operating profits of HK$10.0 million.

The Non-Financial Times

An interesting discussion over at samizdata.net on the financial illiteracy of the Financial Times newspaper.

Much like the situation at The Economist paper, at times you just want to tear your hair out and gnash your teeth in a biblical manner at some of the editorial. In one particular way The Economist is worse since its whole raison d’etre is supposedly to defend free market economics against regressive government intervention.

As one astute commentator at Samizdata says:

The economy is none of the state’s business.

The way the state can help the economy is very simple:

1. Maintain order and property rights (police/law courts)

2. see 1.

Any questions?

The Les Paul Robot Guitar

Surfing around the tech gadgets pages of Growth Business I came across the Les Paul Robot Guitar - a guitar that automatically tunes itself!

US electric guitar manufacturer Gibson can turn all six pegs to standard tuning simultaneously at the touch of a button and also gives players access to six commonly used alternative tuning presets.

Apparently, the guitar ‘talks you through’ the entire process. Whoa!

Production is on a limited run, it comes in a ‘Blue Silverburst Nitrocellulose Finish’ (nice…) and is priced at approximately £1,400 - or £1,200 at the new global CFD rate.

Belgravium Technologies Improves profitability

Mobile computing systems specialist Belgravium Technologies has lifted annual pre-tax profits 11 per cent to £2 million despite falling turnover. The Bradford-based company had warned last year that customers were becoming more cautious and cutting their capital expenditure and it saw turnover fall 2.9% to £10.6m in the year to December 31. However it improved its pre-tax profits to £2.05m from £1.84m last time thanks to contributions from its Touchstar and Novo businesses.

Chairman John Kembery said the profit growth demonstrated its world leading status in mobile computing systems for logistics and retail markets. “These results demonstrate the inherent strengths within our market leading business and we look forward to the opportunities in the year ahead.” Fair dues to the man and the co. who have produced good figures against a backdrop of heightening global economic uncertainty.

Belgravium is a computer design and manufacturing company, specialising in the mobile computing and Radio Frequency Data Communications (RF/DC) market areas.