(News Bulletin 247) – The publisher of websites dedicated to seniors and health has requested the opening of legal recovery proceedings, experiencing difficulties in financing the continuation of its operations. Suspended since the end of September, the group’s action could hardly resume under these conditions.

Erold shareholders will still have to be patient. Suspended since September 29 at the company’s request at a price of 16 euro cents, the listing of the share of the publisher of websites dedicated to health and seniors is not about to resume with the latest announcements.

Erold in fact indicated on Monday evening that he had declared himself in cessation of payments on October 12 with the Commercial Court and also requested the opening of a judicial recovery procedure.

“The objective of this procedure is to evaluate all solutions allowing in the best conditions to perpetuate the activity, maintain employment and settle liabilities, as well as to initiate a process of seeking investors within the framework of a recovery plan by way of continuation or a sale plan”, recalls the ex-Planet Media.

The Commercial Court will soon rule on this request to open a judicial recovery procedure. “If the Commercial Court grants the company’s request, the operation of the company will continue during the observation period,” continues Erold, who specifies that he will keep the market informed of the Commercial Court’s decision and of the progress of the procedure.

A degraded operational and financial situation

A few warning signs suggested this type of announcement. At the end of September, the company which publishes the Planet.fr and Medisite.fr sites announced that it would postpone the publication of its half-yearly accounts until October 31 at the latest. A delay which is never a good thing for a company facing significant financial difficulties due to declining activity.

In his press release published Monday evening, Erold indicates that it has observed a significant decline in its activity over the first six months of the year. At the end of June 2023, turnover fell by almost 50% to 1.7 million euros due to a drop in audiences for the group’s websites. This decline, explains Erold, is directly linked to the underperformance of newsletters, “one of the main sources of site traffic” “as well as that generated by search engines, which “mechanically impacts advertising revenue (‘ direct’ and ‘programmatic’).

And this drop in revenue is detrimental to the rest of the income statement, since at the same time operating costs are higher than the volume of activity generated by Erold. The company did not manage to maintain its gross operating surplus (EBE) in positive territory over the half-year “despite the cost reduction measures taken to quickly lower the breakeven point”. Erold’s net loss widened to 1 million euros, after a negative net result of 0.4 million euros in the first half of 2022.

On the cash side, the situation is very tense. At the end of September, the company explains that it had only 100,000 euros in its coffers, an insufficient level to ensure the continuity of the company given an activity “which has not rebounded in recent months”. Besides, the net financial debt amounts to 1.9 million euros and it includes 0.6 million euros of bonds convertible into shares (OCA) not yet converted.

For several years, Erold has therefore suffered both operationally and on the stock market, particularly in 2023 with a price which collapsed by more than 60%. And the loss of value is even more significant if we go back to Erold’s stock market debut on the free market, in July 2005 at a reference price of 3.90 euros. The company was then called Seniorplanet before its shares were transferred in 2014 to Alternext (now Euronext Growth).