When paidContent:UK opened up the story of SpinVox’s financial turmoil this summer, the ensuing vortex of negativity that surrounded the voice-to-text company suggested something had to be done.
Investors began considering SpinVox’s intellectual property may have value of its own, and some staff, raising talk of a sell-off, began hoping Cisco (NSDQ: CSCO), a SpinVox enterprise client, would make an offer. Independent.co.uk said speech-rec rival Nuance was taking a look. And one investor put the kibosh on SpinVox’s hopes of conducting all this privately by confirming the company was on the block.
Now The Sunday Times says a $150 million sale to Nuance could be completed before Christmas. There’s no sourcing or attribution, so this could be your typical trial balloon of a Sunday business story, but Times says with some certainty that the deadline for repayment of a £30 million bridging loan “has been rolled over to January to allow the takeover to be completed”.
CEO Christina Domecq told paidContent:UK this summer, when SpinVox paid most of its staff in stock rather than cash, that company finances had been hit by the economy and its global expansion. Shareholders were passed an anonymous dossier claiming company funds were spent inappropriately. Times: “It is expected that Nuance, based in Burlington, Massachusetts, will ask co-founder Daniel Doulton to stay on. The future of his partner Christina Domecq is less clear..”
Some things we do know…
— SpinVox last week filed Companies House documents confirming the appointment of its first finance chief in 15 months.
— On July 20, Domecq told paidContent:UK SpinVox would be turn cashflow- and EBITDA-positive with the launch of a Latin America service within 90 days. 146 days have now elapsed but, when we asked on November 20, SpinVox declined to say whether it had turned the corner to profitability.