Listed cleaning business to sell off four of its sites

Rotherham-headquartered cleaning company Xeros Technology Group has agreed to sell its four US-based Marken specialist cleaning sites.

Subject to closing conditions, completion is expected to take place by the end of March.

 The sale of these sites completes the company’s planned transition to a licensing model, which involves its intellectual property being commercialised by licensees with royalties paid to the company.

Following the sale, Xeros will cease to have any physical operations in the US and will have an organisation of close to 50 full time personnel dedicated to licensing. This is in line with its previous guidance of having fewer than 60 staff.

In 2018, the Marken US sites generated combined revenue of £858,000 and an operating loss of £1,933,000.

The Marken business reported net assets of £1,897,000 at the end of 2018. Proceeds of £265,000 will be received in cash by Xeros upon the sale completion.  These proceeds will be used to fund the group’s ongoing working capital requirements.

Mark Nichols, chief executive of Xeros, said: “We are very pleased to have reached our objective of becoming an asset light and IP rich licensing organisation.

“We are now working hard to execute the contracts with our license partners in India and China with evidence and learnings from these being the platform for further geographic and segmental coverage and we look forward to updating the market on our progress in the near future.”