Board Realignment and Issue of Options

RNS Number : 9641K

CyanConnode Holdings PLC

13 July 2017

 

CyanConnode Holdings plc

("CyanConnode" or the "Company")

Board Realignment and Issue of Options

CyanConnode (AIM:CYAN.L), the world leader in narrowband radio mesh networks, announces the appointment of Harry Berry as Chief Operating Officer (COO) and an additional Board role change.

Since the acquisition of Connode in July 2016, Harry has been working closely with the Leadership Team, firstly in the integration of the two organisations, and subsequently with the teams to ensure that the Company is resourced with a single, world class team consisting of a number of experts in their fields. We now believe that this team is in place, aligned and ready to execute on the orders announced over the past few months and that due to his extensive experience operating at this level, Harry is the best person to be placed in this critical role for the Company. This appointment as COO will mean that Harry will move from a Non-Executive to Executive Director capacity and will be effective immediately.

Harry's near term priority as COO will be to convert the £21 million order book (representing purchase orders received from customers but not yet delivered) into successful customer deployment projects, which will result in significant revenue growth for the Company.

In addition to the above Board change, Simon Smith, Chief Financial Officer, will return to a Non-Executive Director role.. Simon joined the Company in 2010 originally as a Non-Executive Director and moved into an executive role of Chief Financial Officer in October 2013, where he has focussed both on fund raising/investor relations as well as on setting up the commercial and financial systems. In his resumed Non-Executive Director role, Simon will continue to also have responsibility for the investor relations of the Company, and will take over as Chair of the Audit Committee. This change will be effective 1st September 2017.

The Company also announces that it has appointed David Bland as full time Finance Director, taking over the day to day finance activities from Simon. David is a qualified Chartered Accountant and has many years' experience working at Board level developing and implementing financial strategies for a range of companies, including in the software and telecoms industries. His experience includes significant work on managing cash and investment strategies, M&A work and other corporate transactions, including working on the spin out of a revenue assurance company from BT. He has also been a divisional Finance Director of several global engineering companies, and in these roles he has gained considerable experience in commercial contractual negotiations and managing logistical and supply chain functions in additional to the traditional finance and IT functions.  This new role, based in the Company's head office in Cambridge on a permanent basis, will bolster the finance function and ensure the Company has the resources in place to support the commercial and delivery teams as the Company moves into this new phase of significant growth. David will work closely with the Board, particularly with Simon Smith. However, David will not sit on the Board of CyanConnode Holdings plc.

Harry Berry commented: "Over recent years I've spent increasing amounts of time bringing together the new organisation of CyanConnode. We are now looking forward to launching our new IPv6 standards based solutions and products which will bring together the best of both Cyan and Connode legacy solutions. We have dramatically improved the quality of the team and our ability to scale delivery of customer contracts. This has become critical on not only existing, but also new orders. The order book continues to grow at a frenetic pace and it has become appropriate at this time for me to move into a full time capacity to continue this process of building a world class engineering and delivery organisation which will then enable us to create significant shareholder value."

Simon Smith commented: "In transitioning back from CFO to my previous Non-Executive Director role, I recognise that customer deliveries against the £21 million order book are now the key priority for us as a business and will be actively supporting both Harry and his team to ensure their success in the remainder of 2017 and beyond. I also welcome David to CyanConnode in the new role of FD - I will be working alongside and supporting him over the coming months to ensure a smooth transition of my day to day finance responsibilities."

John Cronin, Executive Chairman, commented: "I'm delighted that Harry Berry will be moving into this COO role at this critical time for the company. As you can see from Harry's comments he has spent a significant amount of time recently building the team and planning the execution of the large orders we have already won. His experience in this area is going to be invaluable to the Company's success. I also welcome David Bland to the Company as Finance Director. I know that his significant commercial and financial experience will be of great benefit to us. I look forward to continuing to work with Simon in his resumed role as a Non-Executive Director."

As part of Harry's remuneration for this new role he has been awarded options to acquire ordinary shares of 0.01 pence per share in the Company ("Options") as follows:-

Name	Position	Current number of Options held	Exercise Price of current Options (in pence per share)	Number of new Options granted	Exercise price (in pence per share)	Total number of Options now held
Harry Berry	Chief Operating Officer	5,000,000 7,000,000 22,320,884 74,588,871 28,513,186 14,000,000	0.38               0.29        0.28 0.25     0.2172 0.14	410,829,005	0.186	562,251,946
		151,422,941

The Options are exercisable as to 33 per cent. of the issued amount from 1 July 2018 and 33 per cent. of the issued amount on 1 July for each of the following two years. 

The Options will lapse if unexercised after 10 years from the date of grant.  They have been issued at an exercise price of 0.186 pence per share, which represents a 20 per cent. premium to the closing market price on 12 July 2017, being the day before the options were issued.

In addition to these Options, Harry also holds 110,559,292 ordinary shares, having invested £222,621 I the Company. This represents 0.62% of CyanConnode's current issued share capital.

Enquiries:

CyanConnode Holdings plc	Tel: [phone]
John Cronin, Executive Chairman	www.cyanconnode.com
FinnCap Limited (Nomad and Broker) Adrian Hargrave/Giles Rolls (Corporate Finance) Alice Lane (Corporate Broking)	Tel: [phone]
Walbrook PR (Investor Relations)	Tel: [phone]
Paul Cornelius / Nick Rome	[e-mail]

 

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