Beryl Bikes company makes colossal loss but expands in Plymouth

The company which runs Plymouth’s rentable electric bikes made a loss of more than £4m again last year. But London-based sports goods company Smidsy Ltd, which runs the Beryl Bikes scheme, did see its revenue more than double and is expanding the scheme in the city this year. Smidsy Ltd’s annual report and financial statements for the year to the end of March 2023 show total revenue jumped to £11,332,287 from £5,183,017, mainly from its bikeshare scheme which is now running in Plymouth, Cornwall, and 13 other locations.

But although the pre-tax loss fell by almost £1m, it made an after-tax loss for the financial year of £4,270,245, slightly of £4,262,442, and no dividends were paid. Total assets of £16,831,845 were up from £13,156,421, but net liabilities had grown too, to £1,483,845 from £683,873. The company, which , relies on bank loans and convertible loan notes which can be turned into shares.

Documents newly filed at Companies House reveal the company breached its cash covenant in 2023 on a loan from Clydesdale Bank Plc. Smidsy borrowed £2,422,858, at interest of up to 12. 75%.

It was due for repayment at the end of 2025 until the covenant was breached meaning the full loan was due within a year. The company breached its cash covenant again after March 2023, the annual report said. The breaches were not waived by the bank.

Smidsy was also loaned £1m by Frontier Development Capital Ltd, at interest of 8%, due for repayment next year. And the company has received further funding since last March and directors are confident it has sufficient cash to continue. The company has received a commitment from ACG Ltd, a major shareholder, that it will provide cash if needed this financial year and will continue to support it to make sure it remains a going concern.

ACG loaned the company £5m, at 5% interest, in 2022, which are convertible into shares. The company also received a convertible loan note from Newstead Capital Sustainable Opportunities Fund LP of £7m, last summer. It attracts interest at 8% and has to be repaid over 48 months.

In addition, in December 2023 the company issued more than 1. 5m shares raising £2m. In its annual report Smidsy said it has a large outlay of capital expenditure for assets which pay back over a number of years but requires upfront investment which impacts on cashflow over the short and medium term.

The company, which has seen its team expand 121 people from 102, has a target to earn more than £10m from bike journeys across all its schemes in the year to March 2024. In November 2023, two more bikeshare schemes were launched and another will start this spring. In Plymouth, where the goal is to have a 500-strong fleet for hire from more than 90 sites in the city, sites at the Royal William Yard and are due to be added this year.

A spokesperson for Smidsy/Beryl said: “It’s a really exciting time for the company as we’ve grown significantly over the last year, expanding a number of our existing schemes and launching several new ones. In that time, we have more than doubled revenue while reducing our overall losses. “However, we still needed to invest in the necessary staff, technology, assets, mobilisation and set up costs required to grow and develop.

We’re very ambitious and believe in the role our schemes have to play in decarbonising transport, but we need to continue to bring capital into the industry to achieve what we want to do. ” Last year, and together cycled the equivalent of almost five times around the Earth. They were used for more than 75,000 journeys, covering almost 200,000km, and directly replacing 19,575 private-vehicle journeys.

That means more than five tonnes of carbon emissions were saved. With 26,685 people signed up to the scheme, users clocked up 21,158 hours of physical activity. But it was also revealed that last year to the bikes in Plymouth.

In 2023, 154 bikes were tagged as “missing” in the city, but, fortunately, 132 were recovered. .