Wireless Ronin release Q3 financials

November 7, 2008 by Dave Haynes

Nothing more fun than being a public company in the midst of a tough economy. Everybody gets to look under your hood.

Minneapolis-based Wireless Ronin recently went through a downsizing (but still, amazingly, has 125 staff and contractors) and just announced their latest financial results. It doesn’t look too, too pretty in terms of returns, though not that many companies are shooting the lights out right now. You can see the whole thing here.

Part of the deal with these things is to spin a positive tale as best as you can. Maybe I am missing something, but the interim CEO’s take on the company’s relationship with KFC is, well, curious.

Says Steve Birke: “I’m also encouraged by our ongoing relationship with KFC. In June 2008, we successfully completed all of the tasks in the Request for Proposal process that KFC required in order to select a digital menu board solution for its locations. Since that process ended, we have continued to work with this client to complete market tests, and in September we installed the seventy-fifth system for KFC. We have, and will continue, to conduct contract negotiations with KFC regarding implementation of the digital menu board solution. When we have significant additional information, we will provide an update. In the interim, we are excited that KFC’s parent company, Yum! Brands, announced in early October that calorie information will be phased onto menu boards starting this year and completed by January 1, 2011. We believe that successful implementation of calorie information will rely on a digital menu board solution.”

So if I am reading that right, the company filled out all the questions in the menu-board RFP from Yum! – the one the company sent out earlier this year to about 20 companies, and either absentmindedly or brazenly skipped doing the blind CC thing when it sent the doc around. Submitting RFP bids and winning them are two very different things, though as the company in there at pilot stage they certainly have a leg up.

The way the numbers look, the company has about a year of money left at the current burn rate. As Bill Gerba notes in a post today, they have a big job ahead to get their house in order and get their headcount much more in line with the rest of the industry.