iCreate chairman and CEO Tyrone Wilson has vowed that he will do everything in his power to ensure that issues leading to the suspension of the stocks’ trading on the Jamaica Stock Exchange (JSE) over the last five months do not recur after completing “a well-needed exercise” to comply with regulatory rules, though he admits that the process took longer than he would have liked. The development comes after the company on Thursday posted results showing a return to profitability in the January to March quarter.

The company’s stocks are scheduled to start trading again when the market opens today, Wilson told the Jamaica Observer in an interview shortly before an official notice came out on the Jamaica Stock Exchange (JSE) confirming the development.

“iCreate Limited, which trades under the symbol ICREATE on the Jamaica Stock Exchange, will resume the trading of its ordinary shares, effective Wednesday, June 19, 2024,” the JSE notice posted late Tuesday said. It came five months to the day that iCreate’s stocks were suspended. It is expected to resume trading at $0.40 cents.

“The JSE is advising that iCreate Limited has addressed all outstanding issues that led to the suspension of trading in its shares on the JSE on January 18, 2024. Therefore, the JSE has lifted the suspension of trading in the ordinary shares of iCreate Limited as the company is now compliant with the rules of the JSE,” the notice continued.

Commenting on the lifting of the suspension, JSE managing director Marlene Street Forrest was quoted in the same notice as saying that with the company now in compliance with the rules, “there is no reason for the shares to remain suspended. We are happy to have iCreate compliant again”.

The lifting of the suspension came as iCreate submitted several addendums over the last few days to its financial statements going as far back as 2019, the year in which it listed, to meet the requirements of the JSE.

“The team worked very closely with the board internally as well as the Regulatory Market Oversight Division (RMOD) of the stock exchange to ensure that we got everything right, and put everything in order to avoid any recurrence. It took much longer than normal, but it was a well-needed exercise,” Wilson told the Business Observer.

“It was very unfortunate that the shareholders had to wait so long for the stock to resume trading, but, as a company, our board and management, we realised that it’s best to just take the time, and, from a governance perspective, focus on just cleaning up all the things that we need to [clean up]. And it’s not as if a lot of them are major issues. It’s more around some missing disclosures like shareholder listings being left off a quarterly report, or [being] late to put out a disclosure, and so forth. So we had a deep dive ourselves [and with] the stock exchange’s RMOD and just really ensure that we adhere to the standards of the market, because we are on it and we want to continue keeping the integrity of the market and have it as an option for entrepreneurs that are looking to list,” Wilson continued.

He admits that the issues surrounding the company that led to its suspension, plus other challenges that arose before, caused a lot of “dents” to investor confidence in iCreate, but said he is commited to working to restoring belief in himself and the company, and is focused, over the medium to long term, to doing the things that “will prevail over the negativity and the challenges” the company has faced over the years.

“iCreate has gone through several challenges in the past, especially with the COVID pandemic. Two years of that brought us to our knees and we were operating without the sufficient resources that we needed. But the team tried the best [to lift the company out of the situation] and now we have a stronger team. The CFO Chadwick Bennett has pretty much led this process for us. He’s very talented and knowledgable about the financial matters. We just got him on the team last year and we have started to benefit from his knowledge and insights as a former financial controller at GK Capital, and he is very experienced and he has put us on a path where we feel confident. Anthony Dunn on the audit committee has been very vigorous in working with us to ensure we move as fast as possible [in sorting out our issues]. It’s all about the checks and balances that we have in place now, not that they weren’t there before, but going through a suspension twice, it makes you more detailed in your review and processes and not to take anything for granted, and so we’re very happy for that.”

Now with the suspension lifted, Wilson said the focus is on moving the company forward. Last Thursday, iCreate posted its audited results for 2023, and the results for the first quarter, with the latter showing it has bounced back from losses.

Its 2023 audited results showed losses of $154 million, up from the $47 million in losses made in the prior year. But, during the first quarter of this year, it recorded a modest $271,000 profit, compared to a loss of $11.8 million in the same three-month period a year earlier.

The result was due to the performance of its Visual Vibe subsidiary, the digital advertising entity it acquired last year for just under $700 million, before selling a 40 per cent stake, to help pay the balance on the acquisition cost and to generate cash flow for the company.

Wilson said, having seen the potential of Visual Vibe, the entity will become the main focus of iCreate going forward. He said the plan is to upgrade the digital advertising screens at a rate of one per quarter. Visual Vibe has 13 outdoor advertising screens in major towns and has started the upgrading process to better-quality screens, and has already done the screens on Knutsford Boulevard, in the New Kingston business district of St Andrew.

“We are in the process of upgrading the Half-Way-Tree screens now, which [were] the first Visual Vibe screens to be installed, and we have expanded into indoor digital advertising and that carries two types of revenues,” he added. The spend so far on upgrading screens and expanding into indoor advertising so far has been “approximately $10 million to $15 million”, all from cash flow generated by Visual Vibe, Wilson pointed out.

“We want to ensure that our advertisers get the best. A lot of them have been with the cmpany for a long time because they like the locations, there is no downtime and all of that. We are really improving on that even more so that they can just continue to see it as a main source of advertising,” he added.

As for indoor advertising, Wilson said screens have so far been installed in several restaurants including Chillin’ Restaurant and Bar, CRU Bar and Kitchen, and Tacbar as well as the Courtyard Marriot in New Kingston.

“We are in those locations now and we are looking to roll out in some hotels on the north coast,” he said, but added that he could not disclose the names of the hotels he is now in negotiations with. He said a deal has also been signed with Ireland-based gift card business Ding, to advertise their products on Visual Vibe’s display screens across Jamaica to help it generate business on the island.

Turning to his iCreate Institute, the training company that he started in 2019, Wilson noted that the strategy for it is to move up the food chain, and away from some of the courses it started with, in recognition of the pace of technology that has changed how people learn with artificial intelligence and robotics becoming more prominent.

“And that means investing in research and development, putting in our own courses and building them out, making them ready for online, and so forth, and so we can create and own our intellectual property as opposed to be licensing from other partners overseas. Not that that will change entirely. We started out doing that and then we shifted because things were changing so fast, it was easier to just license some programme and become a partner for them. But now for longevity we really are looking to be more atop of the food chain, and we have the Jamaica Tertiary Education Commission approval, so we are a tertiary school here registered with the ministry of education,” he said.

And the third company in the group, GetPAID, its e-commerce and website building business in which it owns a 51 per cent stake, is also coming in for renewed attention.

“GetPAID is a good business. I need the revenue to grow more. I have given management a target of $100 million for next year, from $32 million last year,” he said.

And having had success with acquiring companies to complement the push to create a digital and creative group of companies that complement each other, Wilson said his eyes are peeled for new companies to take over.

“iCreate is on a mission to move to a new level after being on the market for five years,” he continued. “After building our M&A strategy and continuously seeking out opportunities, we will be adding to the group. We are a group of companies and have our sights set on opportunities like Visual Vibe that can take us to the next level. We have other opportunities lined up. We have good strategic investors who have invested over US$3 million over the last year and we are planning on building on those successes.”

He outlined, as well, that while he will continue as chairman and CEO, he will be putting some work into succession planning, but he acknowledged that “in order to attract the right talent, we have to really do a lot more work to put the company into a better position, and so I am focused on that now. I don’t have any plans or intention to resign any of the two posts, and I have the support of the board which is good and the support of the team, so I will just continue to focus on that”.