The Story so far

At the turn of the year, an editorial on NoDPI summarised the past twelve months and looked forward to 2010. In particular

Stefan Allesch-Taylor leaves the Board of Phorm

On 11th January 2010 Phorm announced that director Stefan Allesch-Taylor would step down from the Board of Directors with immediate effect. The remaining directors were:

Companies House and Phorm

At the end of February 2010, a poster on NoDPI reported the response from Companies House to a Freedom of Information Request regarding Phorm UK Inc (FC026153):

As of 13th March 2010, four out of the six directors of Phorm UK Inc were recorded as being resident in the UK.

Two 121media companies have already been dissolved, with second notifications appearing in the London Gazette as follows:

On 21st May 2010 it was noted on the NoDPI forum that Phorm had made multiple submissions to Companies House with the aim of resolving missing director appointments and resignation notificationss.

Phorm announces Brazil deployment

On 26th March 2010, Phorm announced the commercial launch of its Open Internet Exchange ("OIX") platform and deployment of "Web Discover" in Brazil. "Web Discover" appeared to be "Webwise Discover", branded in Portuguese as "Navegador". Phorm stated they were working with Brazilian ISP Oi and portals/content providers Estadão, iG, Terra and UOL. They reported that they already had US$ 5.6 million of pre-booked revenues from advertisers.

Coverage of the launch can be found in Reuters, The Register, TelecomTV and O Globo.

In Brazil, journalist Elio Gaspari covered it in two newspapers on 31st March, both entitled "A trapaça do rastreador da Oi no Velox" {The cheating tracker of Oi Velox}, one in O GLOBO {English translation} and the other in FOLHA DE S. PAULO {English translation}.

Also on 31st March, an article in O Globo {English translation} stated that Phorm's Navegador was deployed to 100 employees of ISP Oi for testing.

Phorm's Global Marketing Director leaves

In May 2010, Phorm's Global Marketing Director, Robert Bridges, left the company to join Yahoo.

Brazil deployment delayed

By the end of June 2010, three Brazilian government departments were investigating Phorm's proposed deployment there:

As of mid-July, the processes were continuing and there was no date for a commercial deployment of Phorm in Brazil.

Korea deployment delayed

KT's plans to deploy Phorm contimued to attract controversy - for example, see this article from March 2010 in dcnews.

A debate sponsored by the National Assembly was held in the Congress Hall Auditorium, Seoul on 1st February 2010. A report of this debate can be found here.

Hearings by the Korea Communications Commission were held on 1st July 2010 reported by jinbo.net here. Subsequent hearings were expected to take place on 29th July 2010.

On 6th August 2010, the Korean online edition of IT Times reported that following controversy and opposition from communications experts 'Qook SmartWeb' had not been commercialised.

Phorm announce their Final Results for 2009

On Wednesday 30th June at 7:00am Phorm announced their Final Results for 2009. The full report can be found on their website.

Brazil deployment: the report was positive about the Brazil deployment, stating that Phorm's explicit 'opt-in' strategy had been well accepted by consumers and that opt-on rates observed to date (preesumably in the Oi trial) had been higher than expected.
$1.6M (Brazillian Reals 2.88M) had been invoiced. There was no indication in the report of whether or not this had been paid.

Results summary: in the year ending 31st December 2009 Phorm reduced its operating loss to $29.7M from the previous year's $49.8M. At the end of 2009 the company's net assets were $20.3M. By 31st May 2010, net assets were $7.8M, with operating cash costs of approximately $2.2M/month in 2010 to that date.

Directors' view on going concern: regarding whether the company was still a going concern, the notes to the accounts stated:
In common with similar businesses at this stage of their development, and in light of the Group's dependence on further financing being made available to it from its shareholders or other providers of finance, the Directors consider the combination of these circumstances represent a material uncertainty that may cast significant doubt upon the Group's ability to continue as a going concern.
Nevertheless, after making enquiries, and considering the uncertainties described above, the directors have a reasonable expectation that the Group will have access to adequate resources to continue in operational existence for the foreseeable future. For these reasons, they continue to adopt the going concern basis in preparing the financial statements.

Auditors' view on going concern: Phorm's auditors, Deliotte LLP, stated that:
The Group's business plan assumes cash inflows from revenue arising from the expansion of the Group's existing commercial deployment and from fund raising which is not yet secured at the date of our report. These conditions ... indicate the existence of a material uncertainty which may case significant doubt about the Group's ability to continue as a going concern. The financial statements do not include the adjustments that would result if the Group was unable to continue as a going concern.

Additional funding: the report also stated that Phorm's prefered way of raising additional funding was at a local level rather than through share dilution:
Given the current position of the business and the expected news-flow we have concluded that the most effective way to deliver on the opportunities ahead is to combine careful husbanding of our cash resources (including the revenues that we expect to generate) with a strategy of funding each market at the local level rather than at the parent level, if local funding is indeed required. We believe that the long-term impact of dilution - at this moment in the company's development - significantly outweighs the short-term financing risks.

Phorm announce $3M share placing

On Wednesday 7th July 2010, Phorm announced that they would be raising a further $3M (£2M) of funding at the parent level, by issuing 1,176,000 new shares at 170 pence (GBX)/share. The placing would be undertaken by Mirabaud Securities LLP with trading expected to commence on Tuesday 13th July. The Placing shares would represent approximately 6.4% of the enlarged issued common share capital of the Company.

On the same day, Phorm also reported that Stephen Partridge-Hicks, a non-executive Director of the Company, had subscribed to 11,700 shares at the Placing Price.

On the first trading day for these shares, Tuesday 13th July, Phorm's shares opened at 152.5 pence and closed at 145 pence.

Kip Meek leaves the Board of Phorm

On 23rd July 2010 Phorm announced that director Kip Meek would step down from the Board of Directors with immediate effect in order to take up the position of chairman of Project Canvas.

Kip Meek had also recently been appointed as chairman of South West Screen.

With Kip Meek's departure, the remaining Phorm directors were: