Shares in Primary Opinion Limited (ASX:POP) were up as much as 81% today after the legal market intelligence company raised A$700,000 and added new expertise to the board.
Primary Opinion stock was last trading at A$0.029, compared to its last close of $0.016.
The company received commitments from sophisticated and institutional investors to raise the funds through the issue of 35 million new fully paid ordinary shares in the company at an issue price of $0.02 per share.
The issue of shares is expected to be completed this week.
The proceeds raised through the placement will enable the company to support overall marketing and business development activities as well as other working capital purposes.
The cash injection comes as the company improves its leadership profile with the appointment of two new directors.
Hugh Robertson and Tony Robinson will be appointed to the board following the successful completion of the capital raising.
Robertson has worked in stockbroking for over 30 years with a variety of firms including Bell Potter, Investor First and more recently Wilson HTM (ASX:WIG). Among his areas of interest is a concentration on small cap industrial stocks and he currently sits on the boards of Hub 24 Ltd (ASX:HUB) and Oncard International Ltd (ASX:ONC).
Robinson has significant experience in wealth management and insurance, including as CEO of Centre Point Alliance (ASX:CAF), IOOF (ASX:IFL) and OAMPS. His other previous management positions include joint managing director of Falkiners Stockbroking, managing director of WealthPoint, chief financial officer of Link Telecommunications and general manager corporate services at Mayne Nickless.
A new partnership
Primary Opinion’s latest reinvigoration follows the establishment of a key partnership earlier this year with World Law Group to provide innovative content solutions to 56 member law firms in 70 countries.
The company will implement a bespoke content aggregation and distribution platform, intended to support and strengthen World Law Group’s communication and marketing activities. Utilising Primary Opinion’s proprietary content platform, as well as its digital distribution channels, World Law Group member firms will be able to more easily share the insight and commentary written by their legal experts with other firms in the network, as well as with their clients.
Key benefits for both World Law Group and its members include:
- Expansion and strengthening of intra-network relationships, both at a firm and attorney level, to foster further referrals among members,
- Providing new channels for firms to reach and showcase their expertise to existing and potential clients,
- Enabling both World Law Group and its member firms to establish and raise their social media presence,
- Delivering a stronger brand presence for World Law Group within the global market,
- Extended content distribution to new markets through Primary Opinion’s platform and digital channel network.
This arrangement gives Primary Opinion added exposure to the global legal services market, which has been estimated to be worth US$610 billion and growing at a compound average growth rate of 4.2% per year.
The market expected to value $750 billion by 2018.
Growing client base
Primary Opinion has also applied its legal content marketing ability toward the email newsletter publications sector via a distribution agreement this year with online publisher SmartBrief.
SmartBrief provides comprehensive regular news briefings of top industry stories to a subscriber base of over 5 million business decision makers and professionals in 15 industries.
The high-quality legal insight and opinion contributed by law firms to the Primary Opinion platform is of relevance to a broad range of business leaders, and the availability of Primary Opinion content will provide SmartBrief editors access to more than 300 sources of IP legal content from which they can select articles to include in up to 200 industry newsletters.
Primary Opinion has likewise formed a partnership with U,S.-based company MultiView to distribute legal content to a portfolio of 800 newsletters covering 29 industry sectors.
In first half of 2015 Primary Opinion launched Business Builder, a suite of integrated analytic, marketing and business development services, which enables law firms globally to identify, connect, and engage with their prospective legal partners and clients.
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