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TWST: Can we start off with an introduction to Forbidden Technologies (London: FBT.L), including a brief historical sketch and a picture of your core activities today?

Mr. Streater: Forbidden Technologies’ main activities are in video streaming and compression technology. We have developed a system that will play back in Java, which means anyone with a PC or a new mobile phone can play back our video. Our history dates back to a company called Eidos, which I founded in 1990. Back then, we had a lot of experience in video editing and when I founded Forbidden in 2000 we licensed the video compression technology from Eidos. However, instead of using the technology solely for video editing, which is targeted mostly at television and corporate videos, we applied it to the internet. Back in 2000 most people had modems as their internet connections and PCs were quite slow, but Java was pretty common. We have spent the last few years improving the technology. For example, we now support broadband as well as narrow band and mid bands, and we now have a wide range of data rates and a wide range of products. We also raised quite a lot of capital when we floated in 2000 and that has kept us in good stead while we’ve developed the products and further established ourselves in our key markets.

TWST: Can you discuss your strategy and key objectives over the next couple of years and what specific achievements will make that period a success?

Mr. Streater: From the product side, we’d expect to have a finished editing system in wide use. As a result of the way we developed our technology with the Java player, everything is very accessible and that will be true for the editing system as well. We would like to be one of the key players in the mobile market so that most video made on mobiles could be edited on our system on the web and then at the push of a button would go onto the website and be available for mobile. You would then just text the number and the video would be sent to your mobile phone, and added to your bill. In two years we want to be well-established in mobile and we want our live editing system to become one of the standard editing systems that people used.

TWST: Can you provide a further insight into the revenue model?

Mr. Streater: We are not giving any published revenue forecasts at the moment, but most of our revenue at the moment is from FORpresentation. We’ve also shipped some live systems and, as I mentioned, we’re starting to work on the mobile product. We’ve got a finished product on mobile now. This year we should see revenue from all of these four areas - presentation, live, mobile and editing. In a couple of year’s time we will probably have added a new area. As I said, live and the editing may become a merged product that includes live compression and editing. We may add additional markets such as security surveillance. If you look at our live demonstration on our website, there’s 24 hour surveillance of Wimbledon and it is pretty obvious that the basic technology is there already for a surveillance system. The possible challenge there is that the surveillance market is more complicated because you need a camera with a black box rather than just a PC. Nevertheless, in a couple of year’s we will be in that market as well.

TWST: Are you comfortable with the balance sheet position and the financial strength to see you through and enable you to execute on all of this?

Mr. Streater: Yes. We have several years of cash available even without sales. But, of course, we’re increasingly making sales, and we should break even long before we would be in danger of running out of cash. That is something we are fortunately not concerned about. A lot of this is about just waiting for the market to appear. As I said, everyone’s had a mobile phone for a few years now, but they have not had a mobile phone that can play video using our software until very recently. It is also nice to have some broadband people out there. Again, you need quite a fast machine to get good quality live compression and its great that everyone can play it back, but you can’t really charge $10,000 for the hardware. In fact, the live compressor hardware costs $1000. So suddenly it’s within reach for a whole range of companies that wouldn’t have spent $10,000. We obviously charge for the software and maintenance as well, but you can see it’s a very affordable solution.