Synchronoss misses deadline for restating accounts – Nasdaq delisting looms

Telecoms cloud services provider Synchronoss has missed a deadline for restating its accounts, making it likely that it will be delisted from the Nasdaq.

When we spoke to CEO Glenn Lurie at MWC earlier this year he was excited about getting all this accounting business sorted and being able to focus entirely on the future. By the end of March Lurie and his CFO were still confident of hitting the 10 May deadline. But in the intervening month or so it became clear that the web of Synchronoss accounts for the past few years was just not going to be fully untangled by today.

“We are disappointed in our inability to meet the May 10 deadline for regaining compliance with Nasdaq listing requirements,” said Lurie. “However, we have made tremendous progress and expect that the audit will be completed no later than June 30, 2018. I also want to thank Ernst & Young for the efforts it is making toward completing the task at hand.”

“Our underlying business is solid and sound,” added Lurie. “We have a strong financial profile with ample liquidity. At the end of the first quarter we had approximately $300 million in cash. Further, as evidenced by our recent announcement that we have entered into an agreement to acquire honeybee Digital Solutions, we are aggressively executing our strategy of putting in place the right people, product portfolio and customer base for long-term profitable growth.”

We checked in with Synchronoss CMO Mary Clark and she echoed the feeling of disappointment. These accounts are a massive sword of Damocles hanging over the new executive team that had no involvement in whatever dodgy book-keeping contributed to this situation and you can tell from Lurie’s official statement how desperate the team is to focus on positive stuff.

Clark told us there has been no correspondence from Nasdaq on the missed deadline but the strong implication from previous statements is that Synchronoss will be delisted. While that would be bad, there is presumably a path toward relisting once they finally get their accounts in order. Synchronoss shares fell by around 20% on the news.

The tone of our conversation took on a much more positive tone when we asked Clark about the recent acquisition of Honeybee Digital Solutions, a ‘customer journey’ software specialist that had been created by Carphone Warehouse here in the UK. This acquisition is designed to augment the Synchronoss legacy handset activation business and Clark said she was excited about the technology and talent it will add to the business.

Under Lurie and Clark Synchronoss is crystallising its identity as a B2B2C partner for operators, providing white-label digital products and services for them to pass on to their customers in the hope of adding a bit of value to their experience. This is the message they desperately want to evangelise, but it looks like they’ll have to wait another month or so to be able to.