Getmapping plots course to exit from stock market

Getmapping, the aerial photography company, announced plans to delist from AIM following mounting losses and continuing disputes with the government-owned mapping agency, Ordnance Survey.

The chief executive, Tristram Cary, said that it was "now prudent to cut costs and concentrate on core activities" after a series of setbacks in the past 12 months.

The company has been in a long-running feud with OS, first over alleged abuse of dominant market position by the agency and, more recently, over changes in specifications for aerial photographic work undertaken by Getmapping in Scotland.

The company finally agreed to drop its abuse case in June and paid £125,000 to OS to cover its legal costs although Mr Cary is still angry about the unfair advantage he feels that OS gets from not having to separately account for its commercial arm from its public sector work. The government agency's commercial activities do not pay a market rate for OS copyright material, Mr Cary claims.

The dispute over what Mr Cary called "subjective specifications criteria" for aerial photographs that the company had taken as part of an OS contract to map Scotland has still to be resolved. OS has not ruled out using Getmapping's work but no date for a final decision has been set.

Also, an attempt by Getmapping to become a reseller of OS digital map data has run into problems over gaining OS suppliers' agreement and that too had no quick resolution in sight.

Mr Cary said: "After taking into account the impact on our future revenues of the OS activities the Board considers that Getmapping must now change its strategy. The original plan to maintain the Millennium Map for the whole of the UK is no longer viable, because OS is a direct competitor with enormous market power and the ability to offset its imagery layer costs against its near-monopoly cartography budget." Mr Cary said that the company, which yesterday reported a loss of £733,000 for the first-half of the year, would save up to £80,000 by delisting. He added that the company would continue to do commissioned photographic work and speculatively collect aerial data. It will also carry on selling third party data over the internet.

He also said that the move was not part of a "public to private transaction" and that "no offer was being made by management or any other party to existing shareholders to acquire their shares".

The company floated in 2000 at 220p and included the Queen in its founder shareholders. The shares closed down 4.25p at 6.75p yesterday.