Phorm live in 2009?

On 10th February 2009, The Register reported that Phorm's Chief Executive Kent Ertugrul said in an interview with the financial newswire Dow Jones that "he expects Phorm's consumer tracking will be online by the end of 2009". However, "BT declined to commit to Phorm's "most definite" deadline. "We've made no comment or statement about the timing of implementation," said BT Group chief press officer Adam Liversage ... Asked whether BT agreed with Ertugrul's statement Liversage said: "I neither agree nor disagree with it in the absence of any further information.""

Further Management Changes at Phorm

On 11th March 2009, Phorm announced two management appointments: Sarah Simon (ex Morgan Stanley) as Financial and Strategic Development Officer, and Mike Moore (who had been with the Telegraph Media Group) as Global Commercial Director.

Two Grants of Options

On 19th March 2009 Phorm announced the granting of options at £2.42 per share to four non-exec directors Stefan Allesch-Taylor, Lord Norman Lamont, Kip Meek and Stephen Partridge-Hicks. In 2002, the Higgs Report (para B.1.3) recommended that non-executives should not normally hold share options.

On 26th March 2009 Phorm announced the restructuring of chief executive Kent Ertugrul's share options incentives including that he had chosen to replace 20% of his salary in Phorm share options at an exercise price of £3.75 per share.

Start of the Korea Telecom trial of Phorm

On Monday 23rd March 2009 it was noticed that the Linkedin profile of Phorm's technical director, Stephen Renshaw, gave his experience as including live trials of Phorm's technology with British Telecom (BT) and Korea Telecom.

On Saturday 28th March 2009 The Times reported that "Phorm, the maker of software that monitors internet use, rose 70p to 445p amid talk of two imminent contract wins in South Korea."

On Monday 30th March, PaidContent reported an interview with Phorm's CEO: "[Kent Ertugrul] says it might be a while before the next trial announcement in another market, but that doesn't mean a lot isn't happening behind the scenes. Ertugrul wouldn't name a date, but said the Korean trial will start "very soon". The controversial and much-discussed behavioural targeting advertiser Phorm has often stated its global ambitions, but so far has produced very little beyond loose agreements with BT (NYSE: BT), Carphone Warehouse and Virgin Media (NSDQ: VMED), and only one live trial."

Also on Monday 30th March 2009 Phorm announced that they would be carrying out a market trial with Korea Telecom. On Thursday 21st May 2009, Phorm formally announced that the trial had started. This included "an innovative new consumer proposition, which will be demonstrated by Phorm ... in the UK on 3 June 2009". This proposition was Webwise Discover.

KT's plans to deploy Phorm attracted controversy - for example, see this article from April 2009 in ohmynews.

Phorm goes on the Offensive

On Monday 27th April 2009, an otherwise unknown poster on the NoDPI forum warned that Phorm were planning to do something big against the individuals involved in the campaign against deep packet inspection. Subsequently an article entitled Phorm chief labels critics 'serial agitators' by Rupert Neate appeared in The Daily Telegraph. This reported allegations by Phorm's chief executive about two leading critics, Alexander Hanff and Marcus Williamson.

Phorm followed this up with a website, 'Stopphoulplay' which claimed that "Over the last year Phorm has been the subject of a smear campaign orchestrated by a small but dedicated band of online 'privacy pirates' who appear very determined to harm our company." It went on to make specific allegations against organisations and individuals who it claimed were part of this campaign.

Over subsequent days, allegations against those who might have political weight or the resources to sue Phorm for defamation - such as the BBC, the Number 10 Website and the Open Rights Group - were removed from the website. Allegations against individuals were modified but most remained.

On 30th April, The Guardian reported that Patrick Robertson, "the PR man who has started advising Phorm since the former chancellor Norman Lamont joined [as Phorm Chairman] ... used to do PR on behalf of General Augusto Pinochet of Chile and is former director of communications with Sir James Goldsmith's Referendum party." Robertson also advised Jonathan Aitken, the former Tory MP and Government minister who was convicted of perjury in 1999 and spent seven months in prison.

Shopphoulplay appears to have been an own-goal for Phorm. Maija Palmer, blogging for the Financial Times stated that "You can tell things have got bad" and quoted Mike Butcher of TechCrunch who opened an article with the statement "It's clear now that Phorm is slowly but surely deadpooling". Jemima Kiss, blogging for The Guardian, asked Phorm: Does its stroppy campaign site signal the beginning of the end?. And Rupert Neate, blogging for The Daily Telegraph declared that Phorm's Stopphoulplay site is a PR disaster.

Phorm announce Webwise Discover

On Wednesday 3rd June 2009, Phorm announced Webwise Discover, 'the ultimate recommendation engine'. Webwise Discover uses the profile generated by Phorm's interception-based technology to deliver information to users based on their past browsing: "For example, a user arriving on a news site will automatically be presented with articles on their favourite sports team or celebrity. Users following the Middle East peace process will be shown the latest headlines from within that site."  Webwise Discover is delived as a widget which webmasters can include on their pages.

Journalists appear to have been underwhelmed by the announcement. They pointed out that Webwise Discover depended on ISPs adopting Phorm's technology. Only Korea Telecom was currently running Phorm's technology, and that only in a market trial. There was as yet no deployment date from BT. The two other UK Phorm partner ISPs (Virgin Media and Talktalk) had not yet publicly committed to deploying it at all. Blogging for the BBC, Rory Cellan-Jones entitled his piece "Phorm's phlat product launch".

Phorm announce £15M share placing

On Wednesday 10th June, Phorm announced that they had raised approximately £15 million through a share placing at £4.50 per share. (At close of business the previous day the shares were trading at £5.46). The placing was undertaken by Mirabaud Securities LLP and Evolution Securities Limited.

With the announcement Phorm stated that its full year 2008 results would be published on Thursday 18th June at 7:00am.

In an article the following day in The Guardian entitled 'How long can Phorm go on?' , Sean Hargrave wrote: "Defying privacy concerns, the behavioural ad firm ploughs on - but as yet has no ISPs, web users, advertisers or publishers" and quoted pessimistic forecasts for the firm by executives from three other online advertising companies.

Phorm's City supporters have form

On Monday 15th June  Wikileaks published a 'Buy Note' for Phorm from Astaire Securities, a UK brokerage. Astaire Securities was in the unusual position of having recently received a public rebuke and fine from the London Stock Exchange, which normally prefers to keep disciplinary processes private so as not to hurt confidence in the market.

This was first covered in the Financial Times on 22nd June and further in the Financial Times alphaville blog on the same day.

In its original article on Worthington Nicolls the Evening Standard refered to Astaire's chief executive Edward Vandyk - also known in the City as 'Dr Death' - and on 1st of July the Standard's Chris Blackhurst reviewed his career in an article entitled 'Dr Death and the failures that have earned him his nickname'.

On 30th June, a poster on NoDPI pointed out that Stefan Allesch-Taylor, a Non-Executive Director of Phorm, was also CEO of Fairfax, Financial Advisors to Astaire Group.

On 2nd September, the Evening Standard's City Spy column asked whether Phorm's brokers, Astaire Securities, could get in trouble again over their strong buy note for Phorm. It pointed out that Stefan Allesch-Taylor, a non-executive director at Phorm was also chairman at Fairfax, the broker which acts as the nominated adviser for Astaire.

Phorm announce their Final Results for 2008

On Thursday 18th June at 7:00am Phorm announced their Final Results for 2008. The full report can be found on their website.

For the first six months of 2008, Phorm's loss before non-cash share-based charges was $19.7 million. In the second half of the year, Phorm made a loss of $18.9 million plus restructuring charges of $3.7 million. This was almost entirely funded from equity.

To lower outgoings the company reduced the scale of its operations in the USA and centralised core operations in the UK. As a result they forecasted a run rate going forward of £1.1 million per month ($1.8 million). At 31st May 2009 the group held cash of $12.8 million which was supplemented by the 10th June equity placing of $24 million before expenses.

In the Annual report, Phorm's CEO Kent Ertugrul wrote about the BT Trial: "The trial was essentially technological in nature and a number of lessons were learned from the experience which will be applied to roll-outs moving forwards. Amongst these are a) developing an offline solution which operates on a copy of the data stream rather than the original version, thereby minimising network impact; b) introducing a network-based opt-out system for those not participating in the proposition; and c)enhancing the consumer proposition through Webwise Discover"

The emphasis on avoiding network impact by copying data for later offline processing and by excluding all data of users not signed up to the scheme may be interpreted as indicating that the 2008 BT trial had encountered performance and capacity challenges.

Further commentary can be found in The Guardian and The Register.

BT Drops Phorm - and so does Carphone Warehouse (TalkTalk)

Early on Monday 6th July  The Guardian reported that UK Internet Service Provider BT had "quietly ditched a controversial system that tracks the internet habits of its customers, developed by the technology firm Phorm." Later that day, in a Stock Exchange RNS announcement, Phorm confirmed that BT was not proceeding with a deployment of its technology in the UK. On the same day, The Guardian quoted a Phorm spokesman: "It is not a great surprise to us, to be honest. It has been a long process and we have never had a definitive date on a launch".

On the same day, The BBC reported BT spokesman Mike Jarvis as saying that "[Our decision has] nothing to do with cost or privacy, it's about resources and priority".

Early on Tuesday 7th July The Times reported that Carphone Warehouse (TalkTalk) had also decided not to proceed with Phorm. Charles Dunstone, head of Carphone Warehouse, said: "We were only going to do it if BT did it and if the whole industry was doing it. We were not interested enough to do it on our own." Carphone Warehouse's decision was confirmed by Phorm on 8th July in an RNS Announcement.

In the month leading up to these announcements, Phorm's share price reached the a high of £5.73 and a low of £2.00:

In a PcPro blog entry Barry Collins wrote: " ... despite a public relations onslaught and concerted attempts to convince everyone from ISPs, to politicians, to advertisers about the merits of its technology, Phorm seems no closer to rollout in the UK than it was 18 months ago, when it first arrived on these shores.  In fact, its chances of success have never looked weaker."

End of the Korea Telecom trial of Phorm?

On Thursday 16th July 2009, ten days after BT's announcement that they had no immediate plans to deploy Phorm's technology a NoDPI poster discovered that Phorm had removed all references to the KT trial from their UK website. The following day it was noted that Phorm had removed some references to the KT trial from their Korean website.

On Tuesday 21st July another NoDPI poster noted that Phorm had removed all references to partners including KT from the partners page of their Korean website.

Phorm loses more Directors

On Sunday 20th September The Guardian's Technology Blog reported the departures of:

The departure of Stratic Schleparis was also reported by the Daily Telegraph and The Register. The Guardian reported the loss of both directors.

Phorm announce their Interim Results for the first half of 2009

On Monday 21st September at 7:00am Phorm announced their Interim Results for the six month period ended 30 June 2009. The full report can be found on their website.

For the first six months of 2009, Phorm's loss before non-cash share-based charges was $12.3 million (2008: $19.7 million). including non-cash share-based charges it was $15 million (2008: $25.6 million). They confirmed that they had reduced the run rate to the desired £1.1 million per month ($1.8 million). At 30th June 2009 the group held cash of $35,456,231.

Phorm leaves the UK market

On Tuesday 22nd September, the Financial Times reported that Phorm were to leave the UK market. "We'd look to re-enter the UK market when we have a proven position," said Sarah Simon, financial, strategic and policy development officer. "We regard the UK as a medium to long-term project," she said.

Phorm final results for 2009

On Wednesday 6th October Phorm announced that their AGM would take place at 12.00 pm on 2nd November 2009.

Phorm not live anywhere as of 12th November 2009

On Thursday 12th November 2009 BEUC (the European Consumers' Organisation) held a conference Consumer Privacy and Online Marketing in Brussels. At this, Sarah Simon (Financial, Strategic and Policy Development Officer of Phorm), was reported as saying that "currently Phorm is NOT deployed anywhere (she made a very strong point of this) and that even in South Korea they are still in trials".

Phorm loses another Director

On Wednesday 18 November 2009 The Guardian reported the departure of Phorm's UK managing director Nick Barnett. A comment on this site pointed out that Phorm's web page for Chris Hogan, Vice President - Advertising and Brand Partnerships, had been removed some time around 9th October 2009. Nick Barnett's departure was also covered in Paid Content.