It is difficult to be a fan of Iomart - the erstwhile internet service provider that ditched its madasafish ISP business last year (£3m) to move into broadband telecoms. In January, the broadband venture was off-loaded (for £2m), with Iomart's management making passing criticism of both the Government's handling of competition issues in the UK telecoms market and BT's business practices. Iomart's big plan now is to focus on NetIntelligence, its enterprise security market product that combines the IPR know-how of Actis Technology (an acquisition from June 2001) and the e-mail management system expertise acquired from September's acquisition of German firm Canbox. Interestingly, the purchase of Canbox has not been as successful as Iomart's management had hoped. The group has failed to grow Canbox's webmail revenue as fast as it hoped. It is difficult to predict whether this latest new focus will succeed, although existing investors no doubt hope that the latest round of restructuring and refocusing will deliver better results. Of the £20m or so raised on admission to Aim in 2000, £7m remains. Interim results for the six months to December 2001 showed sales of £2.42m and a £3.26m loss. The previous full-year results showed a loss of £5.1m. Prior to that, it lost £2.16m. Invest elsewhere.

Iomart	AIM	£37.09m	37.00p	0.00p
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