Gibraltar-based casino supplier Nektan has appointed administrators, confirming it has failed to secure funds needed to keep operating.
On 14 April, Nektan announced it was appointing an administrator, and trading of its ordinary shares on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of the London Stock Exchange was suspended.
Following completion of the required process through the Supreme Court of Gibraltar, Steven de Lara of Signature Litigation Limited and Ian Defty of CVR Global LLP have been appointed joint administrators.
Nektan also confirmed that Shore Capital has resigned as Nominated Adviser, and it will not be appointing a replacement – meaning that, as per Rule 1 of the AIM, admission of the company’s securities to trading will be cancelled.
The company has entered administration despite revenue for H1 FY2020 (ending 31 December 2019), was actually up 157% year-on-year to GBP £797,000 on a continued basis, and after tax had fallen 41% to £2.77m.
As we reported previously, in January Nektan was temporarily suspended from the AIM for missing the deadline to publish its accounts.
At the time of writing, Nektan’s website was still live and contained no mention of the crisis.
AYO.NEWS says:
As recently as last week, Nektan was still making deals with new companies – for example, sealing a deal with games studio Evoplay. Despite this, and the improving revenue, there have been signs that all was not well at Nektan for a while, with CEO Lucy Buckley resigning in August 2019, after just ten months in the role. At the time, Nektan’s difficulties were blamed on overregulation in the key UK market.
It now seems likely that the COVID-19 (coronavirus) crisis has hammered the final nail into the coffin for Nektan. Despite online casinos actually seeing an increase in customers, those companies looking to secure finance, like Nektan, are finding funding has dried up as the world enters what the IMF is predicting to be the worst economic collapse for 90 years.
AYO.NEWS says features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pentagon Digital Limited.
All original content featured on this site is © Pentagon Digital Limited, 2020.
