Ronin's year-end numbers released

February 17, 2009 by Dave Haynes

Minneapolis-based Wireless Ronin released its Q4 and full year results late this afternoon.

The press release reports an, ouch, operating loss of $14.6 million for the year, up a full $6 million from the $8.6 million loss of the previous year. The new CEO points out these are not exactly ideal times to be trying to turn around a company, but points out a lot of work has been done to knock down operating costs (read: headcount).

The standard line I get about Ronin (disclaimer: a competitor on the software side) is they aren’t hardly making money, but still have a big cash reserve to get them to the promised land. But if I am reading the statements right, the company’s overall assets went from $40 million at the start of the year to less than $20 million now.

It’s not likely the next couple of quarters are going to be big ones for just about anyone in this space, including Ronin, so that reserve is going to head further south. On the other hand, they have done a lot to draw down what looked like an insanely high headcount (40 per cent laid off), and that will slow the burn rate.

I leave it to Gerba and others, who are much better at reading and analyzing balance sheets, to pass on their take.

To those readers wondering why Ronin is being so heavily scrutinized, it’s not personal at all. The company is just one of very, very few in our industry that are publicly listed. Therefore, this is a rare chance to look under the covers to see what’s going on.  

UPDATE – Barnaby Page, of Screens.TV, does a solid job of digging into the numbers a little deeper and providing some further analysis, on his site.