VR Education (LSE:VRE) dipped to 23.2p today on the news that it has delayed the release of its virtual recreation of the sinking of the Titanic until August – despite the firm saying this will not affect it financially. Part 2 of Titanic VR – as the product is known – will be ready in beta form by the end of June, as indicated in the company’s admission document when it listed in March.
However, the firm has decided not to make the product publicly available until August 2018 to allow some additional time for refining. Despite this, the business said it will be actively marketing the product ahead of its launch and does not expect the delay to affect market expectations for the financial year ending 31 December 2018.
Titanic VR places users aboard the ship on the night it sunk as well as allowing them to explore its wreck as it looks today. At launch, the virtual reality experience will be available on PC, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Windows Mixed Reality. It will then be available on PlayStation and other platforms some weeks later.
In other news, the business – which currently has a £46.4m market cap – announced that its virtual retelling of the Berlin Blitz made with the BBC will be released in Q3 this year. It also reported that it has hired a new chief technology officer and two experienced business developers who have already started to work on new offers received since listing.
David Whelan, chief executive of VR Education, said: ‘We are delighted with our development progress on Part 2 of Titanic VR and feel we are about to reignite the public’s imagination when it comes to the historic events around the sinking of this world-famous ship. We want to ensure that this experience is the best it can be and this short additional time will allow us to finesse some of the final details that will turn Titanic VR from a great experience to an exceptional one.’
Richard Cooper, the company’s non-executive chairman, added: ‘It has been an extremely busy period for us since our listing in March and we have made a number of new technical and business hires. The Group has made excellent progress and we remain highly focused on delivering what was outlined at the time of our IPO including quality transformative experiences and progressing our ENGAGE education and corporate training platform.’
When we interviewed Whelan in March, we argued that the VR Education’s experienced board and unique business plan give it the potential for some decent upside. Given that we made that call when shares were at 11.8p, today’s weakness could provide a good buying opportunity if you believe in the future potential of virtual reality.
