British businesses are catching up with US peers on cyber security awareness in the wake of high profile hacking events, says Falanx (FLX:AIM) chief executive John Blamire.
And that’s good news, Blamire says, as Falanx continues to build out its security offering for government and commercial clients.
‘We’re seeing interest in the cyber security market which we haven’t seen before in the UK,’ says Blamire after announcing results for the six months to 30 September 2015.
‘We thought the UK market would follow the US and it now appears to be, which is great for us.’
But shares in Falanx trade 18.3% lower at 11p as falling revenues and a loss of £1.3 million disappointed investors.
Blamire says the poor financials are a result of attempts to refocus the business around cyber security as well as investment in new services.
Falanx’s managed services platform, which monitors customer networks for suspicious activity, is up and running. Value-added services, which include incident response, assessment and consulting services, are in the process of being developed or introduced.
These investments, as well as slow sales cycles, mean the business could be loss making for some time.
‘We have to wait and see,’ said Blamire when asked whether Falanx would reach break-even in the second half.
‘We have a lot in the pipeline but there are elongated sales cycles and companies are only just coming to terms with their cyber security issues. There’s a long way to travel before we can put definable forecasts around it.’
New analyst forecasts are expected in the next few weeks, the company said.
