Westfield spinout OneMarket just lost Nordstrom, one of its few customers

Retail tech company OneMarket (ASX:OMN) has flagged to investors this morning that one of its foundational customers, Nordstrom, has not renewed its contract.

OneMarket was demerged from and spun out of retail behemoth Westfield, with the stated aim of developing a retail technology network to help bricks-and-mortar retailers compete more effectively in the evolving retail environment.

It hasn’t had a happy life on the ASX so far: its first financial report, covering the nine months to September last year, revealed a $76 million loss, and in February it started sacking staff as it tried to rein in costs.

And the bad news keeps coming, with Nordstrom, one of three customers the company had signed when it listed on the ASX, not renewing its contract after it expired yesterday. Shares fell 5 per cent to 63c when the market opened.

Nordstrom was using OneMarket’s Live Receipts product, an interactive digital receipt that allows retailers to engage shoppers after a transaction. It is still using the Shopper Exchange product, which generates revenue from advertisers to deploy and manage targeted digital advertising campaigns using retailers’ data.

Nordstrom made global news back in 2017 when it removed Ivanka Trump’s fashion brand from its lineup due to poor sales and ongoing controversy, prompting the President of the US to use his account to blast the company.

My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. She is a great person — always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 8, 2017

OneMarket said the expiry of the contract would not materially impact its cash reserves, though it did not say how it would affect revenues or the bottom line. Stockhead has reached out to the company for comment.

In its quarterly update in January OneMarket forecast “substantially increased” estimated cash outflows for the first three months of 2019, due to “the expected impact of the timing of annual staff bonus payments and one-time cash outflows including costs relating to past acquisitions that have been provided for, as well as severance payments”.

It wrote in January that it has sufficient cash resources to meet its needs without additional financing until “at least late 2020”, but in its announcement late on Wednesday it said it has enough cash to last it until late 2021.

It assured investors everything was looking up, however, and that it had recently entered into a multi-year contract with jewellery maker Pandora for the Live Receipts product.