van Someren goes long as nCipher goes red

NEWS This morning the company reported a net loss of £949,000 for its third quarter, just four weeks after the company's initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange. The company's shares dipped from 378p to 372p following the news. The losses compare to a net profit of £173,000 for the same period last year, but the downturn of £1.2m is something van Someren claims to have in control "We're in a growth phase," he told silicon.com. "We have a good growth margin and we'll reign in our overheads later on." Most of the increased expenditure comes from sales and marketing expenses, particularly from expansion of the sales team. The PKI specialist's Q3 revenues were £3.6m, up 112 per cent on the previous year. The majority of those sales were product-based, with just £308,00 - eight per cent - of revenues coming from services. nCipher's floatation was in part undertaken to fund an expansion into services and consultancy, an area van Someren believes will be lucrative in the future. The British firm has gained a lot of new customers in Europe and Asia over the past 12 months. During Q3 1999, over 80 per cent of its customers were based in the US, compared to 69 per cent this quarter. "It's supposed to be hard work for a UK company to create business in the US - but we started there," said van Someren. "Now, because internet commerce is rising in other countries, we're seeing backfill. "Inevitably people want to see earth shattering results, but that's not a realistic expectation," he added. "The market is very volatile at the moment. The movement in our share price this morning might not even be due to these results."