Former £400m tech star collapses to just £1.6m

THE rollercoaster ride for investors in Blur Group continued yesterday after the former tech darling warned that its shares could soon become worthless.

The firm’s two biggest shareholders – founder and chief executive Philip Letts and tech veteran Robert Keith – lost a combined £1.1m throughout the day as shares tanked 60.3pc, or 5.12p, to 3.38p.

Blur Group, whose technology is used by businesses to list and pitch for contracts online, said that unless it can secure emergency funding its shares could be wiped out as cash levels continue to deteriorate.

It has held funding talks with potential investors, but found the investment terms put forward to be ‘onerous’ and against the interest of shareholders.

While it attempts to secure cash, the firm has outlined a number of cost-cutting measures, including a reduction in management pay and a review of whether to cut rented office space.

The sharp fall marks the latest blip in a tumultuous few years for Blur, which is valued at just over £1.6m, despite once being deemed to be worth nearly £400m.

Shares have plummeted by more than 99pc since their peak in January 2014 following several revenue warnings after the firm confessed to reporting money from complex, multi-year contracts before they had been paid. This ultimately led to a telling-off from the Financial Reporting Council.

The FTSE 100 suffered a weak day of trading on the one-year anniversary of the Brexit referendum, marred by a strong pound and political and economic uncertainty. It fell 0.2pc, or 15.16 points, to 7424.13, capping off its third successive week of losses.

This is its longest run of weekly losses since June last year.

Dollar-earners struggled as the sterling strengthened by as much as 0.4pc against the dollar.

Among these were packaging firm Smurfit Kappa, which fell 2.5pc, or 60p, to 2359p, and pharma giant AstraZeneca, which was down 1.9pc, or 107p, to 5401p.

Broadcaster ITV enjoyed a rare day in the black following a tough couple of months. Analysts at Morgan Stanley upgraded the stock to ‘overweight’, calling its current valuation ‘very attractive’.

It said that as a result of being one of the first broadcasters to suffer during an industry-wide downturn for advertising, any impact has been fully factored into ITV’s share price. With advertising starting to improve, Morgan Stanley said broadcasters should soon return to growth.

It added that ITV is likely to have the edge over competitors due to its strong audience num- bers. Shares rose 3.3pc, or 5.9p, to 182.8p, topping the index.

Premier Inn owner Whitbread managed to stay in the black despite claiming it was ‘extremely concerned’ about the cladding on its budget hotels following the tragic Grenfell Tower fire.

After dipping into losses during morning trading, the firm finished up 0.5pc, or 18p, to 3959p. A terrible week for Domino’s

Pizza Group continued after a downgrade from analysts at Berenberg pushed it to the bottom of the index.

Berenberg downgraded the UK’s largest pizza delivery company from ‘ buy’ to ‘hold’ and cut its price target for the stock from 400p to 325p. It said the firm has been slow to react to competitors who are ‘changing the game’ with features such as order tracking via GPS. The downgrade comes after Investec gave Domino’s a ‘sell’ rating earlier this week.

Yesterday, shares were down 2.8pc, or 8.1p, to 282.6p, and have fallen 13pc this week.