Hyro to settle $2.3m tax bill
Digital marketing agency Hyro has announced that it raised enough capital to settle an outstanding multi-million dollar tax bill by next month.
The announcement:
Hyro Limited (ASX:HYO), Australia’s first and largest digital company has successfully settled with the ATO, for the last of its historical debt and announced a capital raising of approximately $4 million to provide additional working capital and clear all debt by April 2011.
Having achieved $26 million revenue in 2010 this will put the company in the black with a positive net asset position of $1.4 million.
Throughout Hyro’s 17 year history as an innovator in the digital space, it’s been one long and evolving journey to hone the formula that combines strategy, customer-experience, technology and operations to deliver a polished digital business performance.
“Just as we were preparing to launch our comprehensive digital offering the GFC hit. Our major financier Lehman Brothers was placed into administration, which kyboshed any opportunity to raise funds let alone a line of credit. The climate changed overnight from growth to survival,” said Chairman Robert Clarke.
“There are no forerunners in this space as Hyro is neither a media nor technology company – but the evolutionary hybrid – we originated the expertise of combining disciplines.”
Hyro was the first company world-wide to arrive at the doorstep of the Lehman administrators to negotiate a way out of the $21 million convertible note with its restrictive fixed and floating charge. Over the last two years the company has sold its hardware business to ASX listed Synergy Plus Limited and closed under-performing companies in China and New Zealand and the current capital raising will be used primarily to settle legacy debt.
In the last 12 months the company has launched Idaptive, a significant product for which the IP has been in development over the last four years. The product is identity and access management, which Hyro has implanted in government departments in Australia and New Zealand during 2010. Furthermore, Hyro Thailand, which has been in the group since 2004, continues to leverage the high quality of technical expertise in the .NET framework with combined cost and product efficiencies.
From the outset Hyro has maintained solid partnerships with the major industry vendors and been loyally supported by 250 stoic staff across Australasia.
“The Hyro experience has made us a stronger team with an unwavering focus on delivering commercial grade digital solutions and broad capability to enterprises in Australian and abroad,” concluded Mr Clarke.
“From the outset Hyro has maintained solid partnerships with the major industry vendors and been loyally supported by 250 stoic staff across Australasia.”
Let’s hope that the reverse is true and that Hyro remembers to supports its staff when the worst is over. A company is nothing without its people.
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It is heartening to see Hyro getting back in the black again. It was a pioneer in merging marketing, business and technology disciplines and has had some outstanding people working for it from the board down. Every industry needs realistic visionaries such as Hyro. The shame is that over its rise and fall (and now hopefully another rise) it was plagued by being in the right marketing and technology place at the wrong economic time.
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@Dazza: don’t hold your breath.
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Still sounds like more spin than substance! The GFC helped them get out of $24million debt for $2.4million – otherwise they’d be still well and truly in debt up to their ears.
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