What’s cooking in the IPO kitchen?
AIM
Block Energy—a NEX Listed UK based oil exploration and production company whose main country of operation is the Republic of Georgia, looks to join AIM end of February 2018. Offer TBC
OnTheMarket—Intention to float on AIM to raise c.£50m which will be used to fund the growth of the OnTheMarket.com portal, already the third biggest UK residential property portal provider. Offer raising £30m at 165p with mkt cap of £100m . Due 9 Feb.
Main Market Specialist Funds
Life Settlement—closed-ended investment company whose principal activities will be to support and manage portfolios of whole and partial interests in life settlement policies issued by life insurance companies operating predominantly in the US. Due 6 Mar.
Main Market Premium Listing
IntegraFin provides platform services to UK clients and their financial advisers through its award-winning platform, Transact. Due Mar 18. FYSep2017 PBT up 44% to £29.9m.
GEMS Education—report by Reuters that the private schools group is seeking a $4.5bn to $5bn London float in 2018. FYAug17 rev $926.2m and adjusted EBITDA $261.6m.
CVC (Sky Bet) rumoured to be seeking £2.5bn plus float.
VC firm Augmentum rumoured to be seeking raise up to £125m.
Breakfast buffet
IMC Exploration (AQSE:IMC) 1.5p £2.2m
IMC's feasibility study on its flagship project in Avoca, Co. Wicklow (PLs 3849 and 3850) is continuing and to that end the Company has signed a Heads of Agreement with Trove Metals Limited which is expected to lead to a joint venture agreement, subject to the approval of the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment.
We are in on-going discussions regarding Koza's role in IMC. IMC has enjoyed a good working relationship with Koza over several years and, by mutual agreement, the current IMC/Koza joint venture has been set aside. We are assured of and look forward to their contribution to the future of IMC.
IMC is continuing with its application for admission of the whole of its Ordinary Share capital to the standard segment of the Official List of the London Stock Exchange.
IQE (LON:IQE) 104.4p £798.38m
“IQE plc notes the report published by ShadowFall Capital & Research LLP, which was disseminated to the public on 2 February 2018.
The allegations contained within the report are without merit and provide a misleading analysis of the Company's financial position. The central thesis of this report is a fundamental misrepresentation of the profit and cash generation of IQE, especially with respect to the Company's joint venture agreements.
IQE would like to directly address the key themes in the report, correct any misinformation that might arise from the report's inaccuracies and assure shareholders that IQE holds itself to the highest standards of corporate governance, transparency and integrity.
It is also important to note that ShadowFall states that it holds a short position in IQE and so will duly profit from any near-term reduction in IQE's share price, caused by the allegations in the report. ShadowFall made no attempt to review its report with IQE prior to its publication.” FYDec18E rev £175.05, PBT £32.78m.
Smart Metering Systems (LON:SMS) 736p £827.64m
“The integrated metering services company that installs, owns and manages utility metering assets, is pleased to provide the following update on trading in the year ended 31 Dec 2017.
The Company's continued investment in its gas and electricity metering portfolio saw the total number of assets under management increase by approximately 62% to 2.03m by 31 December 2017. This figure includes 423,000 gas and electricity domestic smart meters in the growing domestic smart meter market.
Total annualised recurring revenue increased by 38% to £57m as at 31 Dec 2017. In the Gas division, meter recurring revenue grew by 15% to £36.1m, while data recurring revenue increased 15% to £3m. In the Electricity division, meter recurring revenue nearly tripled to £11.2m and data recurring revenue grew 56% to £6.7m.
Based on unaudited management accounts for the period, SMS expects that its results for the year to 31 December 2017 will be in line with current market expectations and these will be published mid-March 2018.” FY Dec17E rev £77.68m and PBT £20.47m.
Versarien (LON:VRS) 107.5p £159.8m
“The advanced materials engineering group, is pleased to announce that Neill Ricketts, the Company's CEO, has been appointed to the advisory board of the United States National Graphene Association ("NGA")
The NGA is currently the main organization and body in the United States advocating and promoting the commercialisation of graphene. The NGA serves as the nexus to bring together current and future graphene stakeholders - entrepreneurs, companies, researchers, developers and suppliers, investors, venture capitalists and government agencies to drive innovation, and to expedite and facilitate the commercialisation of graphene products and technologies in the United States and globally.” We could see no forecasts.
IMImobile (LON:IMO) 250p £155.05m
The “cloud communications software and solutions provider, has signed a partnership agreement with KCOM - a leading provider of communications and IT services in the UK.
IMImobile's omnichannel chat solution, IMIchat, will enable KCOM's contact centre clients to provide live two-way interactive messaging chats with customers across digital channels like SMS, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, and Webchat, alongside their existing voice channels. To support end-to-end customer experience and service automation, KCOM customers will also be able use IMIconnect, IMImobile's customer journey automation platform.
KCOM chose IMImobile due to its market leading position in the digital customer interaction space as well as the ability to integrate digital communication channels into existing contact centre infrastructure.” FYMar18E rev £108.2m and PBT £9.4m.
Shield Theraputics (LON:STX) 112.5p £130.98m
Shield reported top-line results from pivotal Phase III study of Feraccru® (Ferric Maltol) in the treatment of IDA in patients with CKD
* Primary efficacy endpoint not achieved
* Tolerability profile of Feraccru reconfirmed
* A review of the full dataset will be conducted to better understand the result
* Feraccru remains commercially available for IBD patients with IDA through Shield and its commercial partners in Europe and other ongoing clinical studies will continue.
“We now await the full dataset in order to fully understand the study's outcome and define the next steps in our strategy. Concurrently, we will focus on interacting with EMA on the label expansion application, on concluding the AEGIS-H2H study as expeditiously as possible and on taking actions to extend the current cash runway beyond the end of Q2 2018."
Croma Security Solutions (CSSG.L) 83.5p £13.28m
HY Dec 17 trading update. Materially ahead of comp period. “The Company's two principal divisions Croma Vigilant and Croma Systems have both been successful in securing new and retaining existing business. Croma Vigilant, which provides ex-military security professionals to both the private and public sector, has benefitted from a significant increase in demand for its premium services. A significant proportion of the increased demand has come from shorter term projects, and one of these projects has resulted in the Company winning a valuable five year contract for the provision of security services, as announced in December 2017.”
The Company expects to report for the six months to 31 Dec 2017 EBITDA in excess of £1.1m (2016: £0.44m). We could see no forecasts.
Eckoh (ECK.L) 40.75p £102.75m
“Eckoh plc, the global provider of secure payment products and customer contact solutions, has since interim results on Nov 22nd 2017 secured six sizeable UK contract wins across the payments, insurance, healthcare and mobile telecoms sectors - the latter being a contract with one of the UK's largest mobile network providers.
Eckoh previously indicated at its interim results that the restructuring of its UK sales function would ensure a greater focus on larger strategic accounts, leveraging the strength of the entire Eckoh product portfolio, and that the benefits of the restructuring would come through in the second half. Today's announcement demonstrates that the Company has begun to see the positive impact of this initiative as these contract wins constitute a mix of both secure payments and customer contact solutions, and the pipeline of UK business is strong.” FY Mar 18E rev £31.43m and PBT £5.06m.