Asite books more losses

Among the regular email bulletins I receive is one from UK industry weekly Construction News. Today’s includes the above Asite headline, alerting us to the publication of the extranet provider’s latest interim results, for the six months to 30 June 2005.

Predictably, CN highlighted the losses, reported by Asite as follows: "The Group’s operating loss of £0.959 million compares with a loss of £0.843 million in the six months ended 30 June 2004, and £3.931 million in the 12 months ended 31 December 2004."

Colin Goodall, Asite’s chairman talked about "challenging conditions and technical issues faced by the Group in the second half of 2004". During the first six months of 2005, Tom Dengenis resigned as group chief executive in March, and turnover was up just 1% at £0.793m, but at least Asite claimed to "have now addressed the technical issues which held the Group back".

Mr Goodall reports: "The Group has now completed building its software development team in India where 62 staff are currently employed. In addition to development, system operations, design, testing and support activities are all carried out from our operations there." He went on: "The Group is now focussing its available resources on sales and business development and our progress in the first half of 2005 has been promising."

At lunchtime today (12.17pm BST), Asite shares were 15% down on yesterday’s close, at 2.125p, perhaps heading back towards the 2p levels it bottomed out at in June.