It’s been a difficult time of late (well, for ages, actually) for tiny, AIM-listed healthcare information systems provider Clinical Computing. This was most recently signalled at its interim results, when a decline in new business from its NHS customers hit revenues and kept the company yet again in operating loss (see here). Indeed Clinical hasn’t made an operating profit for years. So after 18 years as a publicly quoted company, management has finally decided to delist the stock, which should come to pass at the end of the month. They already have undertakings representing almost 60% of the issued capital.
The reasons put forward for the delisting are, as ever, cost, liquidity and the difficulty in attracting investment. Interestingly, management highlighted the cost of an AIM listing at £80k p.a., though they say this excludes senior executive time. More typically, costs of some £250k are usually bandied around. In any event, for a loss-making, £3m revenue company, it’s a heavy burden.
Clinical is one of the stalwarts of the UK software and IT services scene, though it never really went anywhere. Clinical IPO’d in 1994 on the Main Market at 124p, and transferred to AIM in 2007. Leafing through the last-ever published Holway Report, I note that Clinical’s revenues in 1999 were even higher than last year’s, at £3.1m, though they did make a reasonable £382k pre-tax profit. Clinical’s shares closed last week at just 0.6p, valuing the company at around £600k. Amazing they lasted this long, really.
Clinical becomes the fifth UK SITS player to delist from AIM so far this year, preceded by Parseq, Patsystems, Clarity Commerce and Workplace Systems. Next?