Melbourne IT has gone into a trading halt on the ASX pending the announcement on the outcome of a strategic review of its operations.
The review of its business began in November last year and stated it was keen to hold discussions with a number of parties, primarily large offshore organisations, which had an interest in acquiring one or more divisions of the company.
The web hosting and domain name registration company recently revealed it experienced a tough financial year in 2012 with revenue decreasing 5 per cent to $170.6 million and net profit down 16 per cent to $11.4 million.
Some of the factors that contributed to the result included project delays by the Queensland Government, ICANN setbacks in releasing its new gTLD program during 2012. Its SMB division experiencing a challenging year, losing ‘several million dollars’ by Microsoft Office Live exiting the domain resale business and it was hit with some credit card scams.
At the time Melbourne IT CEO and managing director, Theo Hnarakis, said it didn’t achieve as much as it would have liked and it would be placing a lot of effort into ‘brand’ top-level domains (TLDs) to be released by ICANN this year.
Trading is expected to resume by March 14 or when the company makes further announcements to the ASX.
At the time of the halt, it was trading at $1.95.
More to follow.
