Shares plummeted at tech firm Proxama after it announced it was looking for £5.3m of investment to fund a change in direction.

The AIM-listed company wants to use the cash – of which £1.2m has already been raised through a share placing – to clear its debts as it tries to take a bigger slice of the UK's £3.8bn mobile advert market.

It came as Proxama, which has its head office in Surrey Street in Norwich, published full-year results showing pre-tax losses of £5.8m for the year to December 31, compared to a £6.1m loss the year before. On the news Proxama's shares plummeted 63% from 0.15p to 0.05p.

The company wants to replace the funds it had hoped to raise from a sale of its digital payments division, abandoned in May.

Chief executive John Kennedy said the company had ambitions to become a mobile data and intelligence company, moving away from proximity marketing, which allowed advertisers to target consumers based on their physical location in real time.

Proxama, which also has offices in London and New York, will provide insight software which can tell advertisers how many times their advert has been viewed to evaluate efficiency. The firm said it had made four major brand partnerships in its data sales division in the first part of 2017 and has increased its monetisable audience to 2.7 million people.

Mr Kennedy said he wanted to reassure investors they would be contributing to a 'significant new growth direction'.

He said: 'Myself, and my fellow directors, are participating in this transaction, and are confident in the outlook for a debt-free business with access to valuable anonymised mobile location data, with the expertise to monetise it, and the market demand for it.'

A placing of shares was successful, raising £1.2m after expenses, with a group of directors taking £200,000 of shares, and the business hopes to raise a further £4.1m from an open offer to shareholders.

Turnover was down to £1.8m, from £2.5m in 2015, with a government grant taking overall income up to £2.4m.

Proxama, which employs around 30 people in Norwich with 61 in total, said in May its digital payments arm had been restructured to save £1.2m in costs, and profitable long-term contracts would contribute towards the data division.