Datalex has returned to its main shareholder, Dermot Desmond, for a fresh loan facility, even after the travel retail software company for airlines said that its recent delisting from the Dublin stock market could open doors to an array of different funding options.
The Dublin-based company, whose customers include Aer Lingus, EasyJet and Air China, has disclosed in new filings with the Companies Registration Office (CRO) that Mr Desmond’s Tireragh Ltd vehicle registered a charge against Datalex assets in exchange for a new loan.
The company was, said sources, in discussions with a number of potential parties at the end of July as it went about raising €6 million of debt funding and delisting from the stock market. The money was earmarked for investment in its core platform and to boost working capital.
The new filings do not say how much Datalex has borrowed from Tireragh this time round – or the interest rate being charged. However, they show that Tireragh has secured first fixed charges over all of Datalex’s physical assets, intellectual property, and investments.
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A spokeswoman for the company was not in a position to comment when contacted by The Irish Times. Datalex is led by chief executive Jonathan Rockett.
Datalex had previously relied on emergency loans from the Isle of Man-based Tireragh vehicle over the past six years as it grappled with the fallout from accounting irregularities, which emerged in 2019, and the subsequent impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the aviation sector.
Datalax raised €50 million of equity in share sales in 2021 and 2024, largely to repay Tireragh loans, which carried interest rates of as much as 18 per cent. However, Mr Desmond was the main subscriber to the equity in both instances, resulting in his shareholding reaching 49 per cent.
Group chairman David Hargaden said in a letter to shareholders in August, before an extraordinary general meeting (egm) on the delisting, that the board believed that Datalex “will potentially have greater access to specialised investment sources as an unquoted company, including private equity, and strategic investors, which will provide a broader spread of funding options”.
The 2021 and 2024 equity raises were carried out at a steep discount to what analysts estimated to be Datalex’s integral value. Some of the discount was attributed by market observers to concerns about the company’s repeated reliance on high-cost loans from Mr Desmond.
Mr Desmond and company’s other two main shareholders, businessman Nick Furlong and his Pageant Investments vehicle and former Glen Dimplex chief executive Sean O’Driscoll, used their combined 78.1 per cent stakes in Datalex to push through a resolution on delisting at the company’s egm on September 4th. The delisting took effect on September 12th, 25 years after the company floated.
The delisting came after Datalex reported in August that revenues increased by 9 per cent on the year to $14.5 million (€12.6 million) in the first half, while its loss before interest, tax depreciation and amortisation narrowed by two-thirds to $600,000.
