Mirriad Advertising PLC (LON:MIRI) has raised just over £14mln from some of the City’s institutions, and it hopes to secure another £4mln from retail investors.
The company, which uses artificial intelligence to place products in TV shows and films, burns through around £1mln every month, and it wil use the cash injection to support its growth plans and strengthen its balance sheet.
READ:Mirriad gets into bed with Tencent
Mirriad is raising the money by issuing up to 121mln new shares at a price of 15p apiece – a near-35% discount to the closing price on Thursday.
Several directors, including chief executive Stephan Beringer and chairman John Pearson are taking part in the placing.
“We were very excited by the tremendous support from our investors and the strong commitment from new backers in the fundraise announced this morning,” said CEO Beringer, who joined towards the end of 2018.
“It shows the great confidence in our product and our new strategy, after the previously challenging period for the company.
“We now look forward to putting our transformation strategy into action by further accelerating the development of the technology and platform and by growing our engagement with content producers and distributors in our key markets China, France, Germany, UK and US.”
Record 2019 to be followed by record 2020
The new strategy has already borne fruit after Mirriad secured a lucrative contract win with Chinese video platform giant, Tencent, last week.
Some of the new cash will no doubt go towards fulfilling the demands of that contract, which will give Tencent’s advertising clients access to Mirriad’s in-video ad technology.
Bosses repeated today that the agreement means this year’s revenue will exceed that recorded in 2017. It will also be “substantially greater” than what was achieved in 2018.
“Mirriad now expects minimum revenues of £1.1mln in 2019 and £2.2mln in 2020 based on existing customer contracts and before the impact of any incremental revenue arising from ongoing commercial discussions,” read a trading update on Friday.
CEO Beringer added: “There is now a real sense of momentum surrounding the new strategy we are implementing at Mirriad.
“The Tencent contract is a very important milestone and proof of the work we are undertaking to get our Academy Award-winning technology to transform the way advertisers can engage with their target audiences.”