Torridon shares suspended

Recently restructured connectivity vendor sees company value plummet.

Just months after abandoning the channel and moving to a more direct sales model, media connectivity product vendor Torridon has had its shares suspended on Nasdaq Europe.

Torridon, which restructured in April to focus on an IP licensing model (CRN, 11 April), saw its shares fall to just 1½ (0.7p), valuing the company at £38,000, compared with more than £100m at its peak.

Over the past 12 months, Torridon has sold its music hardware technologies, disposed of its e-music business to DigMedia and dropped out of the memory market with the sale of Memory Plus to its management team (CRN, 21 February).

Back then, chief executive Andrew MacKenzie said the firm was over the painful part of its restructuring process and that its future "looked bright".

Torridon's setback comes at a time when the market is in the early grips of a recession. The firm is currently raising new funds to keep the company afloat until next year. It posted disappointing results last year, reporting an annual turnover of £54m for the year ended December 2000, compared with £97.8m the previous year.

But Simon Hollingsworth, chief financial officer at Torridon, said the company is at a crucial stage for its fund-raising agenda. "We announced back in April that we intended to raise additional funds for the business and are 90 per cent of the way there," he said, adding that if unsuccessful the company will not rule out any options.

"The business is still extremely active in terms of new products and there is a strong degree of interest," he claimed.

Brian Burke, manager at D&B Computanet, part of industry specialist Dun & Bradstreet, said: "It is going to be a protracted process which will make Torridon particularly open to acquisition."

Dave Flack, sales director at Memory Plus, said the news did not come as a a surprise. "They have concentrated their efforts on the development of Internet connectivity technology and have found the resulting product concepts difficult to license," he said.

MacKenzie is "more than capable" of turning the company around, he said.