ASX listed smart lighting company Vivid Technology (ASX: VIV) has called in the administrators saying it has not been able to secure sufficient support for its longer-term funding needs.
Richard John Cauchi and Peter Gountzos of SV Partners, Melbourne have been appointed administrators. The move follows the company suspending its shares from trading in March “pending the release of an announcement regarding a proposed capital raising. They have been in suspension ever since.
In April it told the ASX that the capital raising had fallen short of the amount sought, that it had looked at other sources of funding and had received commitments of $1.2 million from “various sophisticated investor lenders” under a secured convertible loan facility.
Company secretary Chris Hayes said the company had been forced into the move despite having made significant progress in attempting to re-structure the business, including: a full review of the business operating structure and operating costs; creating avenues for growth through technology enhancements; development of its agribusiness footprint; and expansion of the key customer sales pipeline.
Smart energy MoU
There was some good news in May when the company announced an MoU with WePower, described as “an emerging player in next generation green energy procurement that utilises blockchain to develop smart contracts that drastically simplify the process around energy procurement contracts.”
It said the two companies would “leverage data from Vivid Technology’s Matrixx intelligent lighting platform backed by its Klarity analytics software, to enable identification and validate customer site energy performance. …[and] develop smart contracts on WePower’s blockchain trading platform to maximise cost savings from customer existing energy purchasing contracts.”
Prospects looked good in 201
Earlier the company’s prospects had look rosy. In 2017 it signed an MoU to supply its LED lighting technology to Honeywell Building Solutions Australia for use on a number of Honeywell projects in Australia, saying the partnership would provide it with a significant new sales channel.
Its subsidiary Vivid Industrial, made it into list of 200 Westpac Businesses of Tomorrow, with a citation that read: “It is a uniquely Australian designed, locally manufactured, modular, plug-n-play technology, with inbuilt intelligence utilising data and algorithm control to continuously adjust a number of attached sensors and allow for predictive maintenance, optimising maintenance costs and extending product reliability.
“It is accompanied by the company’s unique disruptive commercialisation model, ‘share and save’, which essentially sells lights as a service.”
Preferred supplier to Coca Cola
In the same month Coca Cola Amatil named Vivid Industrial as a preferred supplier. Vivid said it would be providing its “unique ‘plug-and-play’ Matrixx intelligent LED lighting system to deliver savings often in excess of 85 percent in lighting energy cost and equal reductions in CO2 emissions, to Amatil warehouses and production facilities.
In November 2018 t Vivid Technology announce a commercial partnership with Woodside Petroleum to jointly develop an Industry 4.0 smart lighting solution for a major natural gas liquification process.
“The project will see Vivid Technology leverage its industry knowledge, IP and expertise to further develop its Matrixx smart LED lighting system as a retrofit solution for hazardous area compliant lighting systems, with similar efficiency capabilities while meeting stringent industrial safety requirements,” Vivid said.
“ Woodside’s funding contribution to the project, will provide them access to the new technology which will significantly improve energy efficiency, reliability and energy cost savings while also transforming Woodside’s LNG plants into digitally enabled sites.”
A good FY18
At the company’s AGM in November 2018 chairman Charles Macek was extremely bullish, saying:
“The 2018 financial year was a transformational year for your company. We received further validation of the continuing evolution of our technology, the value it creates for industry and confirmation of our business model. We continued to build the foundations for a large business through the investment in developing our technologies and our people capability…
The company had more than trebled annual revenues, from $2.3m in FY17 to $7.3m in FY18, and boasted a list of blue chip customers, and had just been recognised as the 19th fastest growing company in the 2018 Smart50 Awards.
In January 2018, smallcaps.com reported: “Just moments after releasing quarterly cash receipts from customers had risen strongly to $4.8m, Vivid shares rose more than 66 percent or 3c a share to 7.5c and were maintaining that rise.”
