LONDON (ShareCast) - Bango’s shares fell after the mobile web payments and analytics company said it widened losses in first half.

Adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) came in at a loss of £1.18m, compared to last year’s loss of £0.98m.

Losses per share rose to 3.87p from 3.23p, while the loss before tax climbed to £1.83m from £1.32m in 2012.

The losses reflected a drop in turnover to £4.54m from £5.67 last year, including a fall in end-user activity.

Turnover was affected by the transition of the business from feature phone to smartphone and app store based activity as well as the inclusion of agency fees in end user activity.

Total operating costs excluding depreciation, amortisation and share based payment increased to £2.37m from £1.65m due to investments in the capability and connectivity of Bango datacentres, additional contingency and security measures, and a new operations team of 10 people.

Nevertheless, the group achieved a 78% rise in total gross profit to £1.2m, supported by a growing number of smartphone users.

End-user spend climbed 27% to £6.6m compared last year. The total margin surged to 26.21% from 11.8%.

“Bango has now successfully progressed smartphone opportunities so that there has been a solid return to growth in the first half of 2013 and a continuation of growth into the second half,” said Chief Executive Officer Ray Anderson.

“Continued growth of BlackBerry World is being augmented by substantial growth from newer deployments such as Google Play, Microsoft Windows Phone Store, Facebook and Android users. The developing relationship with Microsoft and the very new relationship with Mozilla position Bango favorably for success in emerging markets, such as India, Brazil, Malaysia and Indonesia.”

Shares fell 9.78% to 166p at 11:23 on Tuesday.

RD

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