Dish of the day
The British Honey Company (BHC), the premium British Honey and Infused Spirits brand, has become the first company to join the Aquis Stock Exchange ‘AQSE’ (formerly NEX Exchange). Raised gross proceeds of £4.25m at a placing price of 110 pence per share. BHC is currently selling through Waitrose, Majestic and Amazon to name but a few. FY 2019 - £560k revenue, £950k loss . Mkt Cap £10.9m.
Off the menu
MXC Capital has left AIM pursuant to AIM rule 41.
Banquet Buffet
Significant progress has been achieved in the acquisition of mining equipment following the recent debt raising by the Company.
Several major items of equipment have been delivered to the mine site at Sekisovskoye during 2020:
With the current equipment now on site production has been steadily increasing with a monthly run rate of 29,000t being achieved in February, (February 2019: 10,185t) a significant increase from the prior year.
Production is budgeted to further increase once the second batch of equipment is received in May 2020, with management targeting to increase the run rate to approximately 45,000t a month in Q4 2020. The Company will release further updates as plans progress.
EQTEQ (LON:EQT) 0.175p £6.9m
Signing of a Collaboration Framework Agreement (, with the German EPC company ewerGy GmbH covering the key terms of the proposed cooperation for the development of a portfolio of projects in Greece and the Balkan Region.
The purpose of the Agreement is for EQTEC and ewerGy to co-operate and collaborate to develop projects together in the Territory and to promote and introduce to each other commercial opportunities. · The parties will focus their joint efforts to develop a selected project portfolio in the region and to use EQTEC's Advanced Gasification Technology in projects which will include electricity generation, heat supply and/or CCHP (combined cooling heating and power), as well as syngas to chemicals.
·The parties have identified 11 potential projects in the pipeline: Two are under development, of 0.5MWe and 1MWe respectively, with the remaining projects under due diligence. All of the projects have the required permitting, economic feasibility studies and secured biomass feedstock, supplied by the local communities, for proposed development.
Westminster (LON:WSG) 7.25p £11.56m
Covid-19 update. “Thankfully, to date we have only suffered minor disruption to our travel and activities. Our West African airport operations have not yet suffered any downturn; indeed, passenger numbers continue to be at record levels. We continue to monitor the situation accordingly.
Westminster is a recognised provider of security and safety screening equipment and has previously supplied fever screening equipment during epidemics such as Ebola and Bird Flu, to various countries around the world but nothing on the scale we are now seeing. So far in 2020 we have dealt with over 500 enquiries from all over the world for fever detection and associated equipment, resulting in sales of approximately $720,000 USD, by comparison we had no such enquiries in 2019.
We are currently handling an average of 28 enquiries per day and our teams are working hard to support our customers in these difficult times particularly with the potential disruption to supply chains and demand exceeding our suppliers manufacturing capacity in certain items.”
Duke Royalty (LON:DUKE) 30.6p £73.3m
The provider of alternative capital solutions to a diversified range of profitable and long-established businesses in Europe and abroad, announced a follow-on investment of £1 million into its existing royalty partner Lynx Equity (UK) Ltd.
Lynx UK will use this contribution from Duke towards the acquisition of Danish manufacturer, Arkas A/S, which was agreed in February 2020. This acquisition is Lynx UK's sixth acquisition within the UK and Europe and this follow-on investment further diversifies both Duke's portfolio and Lynx UK's revenue and EBITDA base.
With Duke's investment in Lynx UK now increased to £13 million, the Company is entitled to higher distributions of £1.7m per annum, beginning in April 2020, representing a pro forma cash yield of 13.0% on total invested capital.
Arkas is a private, profitable manufacturer of bespoke garage doors and single doors for commercial and residential applications.
redT energy (LON:RED) 1.225p £11.65m
The energy storage solutions company, announces today that it has signed an agreement with the shareholders of Avalon to give effect to the proposed merger of the two companies. It is proposed that the Enlarged Group will change its name to Invinity Energy Systems plc and that immediately prior to admission, the Company will undertake a share consolidation of its issued share capital on a 50 to 1 basis.
· The proposed merger will create a leading player in the growing energy storage market with operations in North America, Europe and Asia
·Total debt and equity funding secured of £14.9 million, including the conversion of existing Bushveld debt of $5 million (£3.97m).
£7.9m placing at 1.65p.
Inspiration Healthcare (LON:IHC) 84p £32.2m
The global medical technology company, is pleased to announce that it has received an order from the UK National Health Service for the immediate supply of ventilators totalling £1.25m. This is the single largest order Inspiration Healthcare has ever received and is directly in response to the preparations being made by the Dept of Health and Social Care to deal with the Covid-19 (Coronavirus) situation in the UK.
“We are pleased to have been able to be engaged with the DHSC regarding the UK's preparedness planning against Covid-19. However, we are only too aware of the fast changing nature of governmental controls being put in place around the world in response to the spread of the virus and whilst we are working with our US supplier to achieve delivery as soon as possible we recognise that this may be subject to a number of factors which are outside of our control.
Goldstone Resources (LON:GRL) 2.15p £5.4m
Up to US$4.3m of funding from certain new and existing investors to finance the advancement of its Akrokeri-Homase Gold Project ("AKHM") into production.
·Fundraise of up to US$4.3m. Issue of twenty six 14% unsecured bond notes of US$50,000 each to certain existing and new investors, to raise, in aggregate, US$1.3m
Paracale Gold Limited and BCM Investments Limited have each subscribed for Bonds with a value of US$0.3m respectively
52m warrants, exercisable at 3 pence to be issued to the Bond subscribers. Commission of 3% payable to Bond holders
Conditional issue of 14% secured gold loan of up to 2,000 troy ounces of gold at a price of US$1,500 per troy ounce, equating to a value of US$3.0m before expenses to Asian Investment Management Services Ltd
Time Out Group (LON:TMO) 64.5p £95.8m
Time Out has until now not experienced any material impact on its trading related to the COVID 19 outbreaks. It is only in very recent days that we have observed any change in footfall to the Time Out Markets and delays to advertising campaigns.
We have however been closely monitoring events and in response to local government guidelines and in the interest of customer safety we have temporarily closed the five Time Out Markets in Lisbon and the USA and await further advice. Given the uncertainty of the situation it is not currently possible to quantify the full trading impact of COVID-19, which will be highly dependent on the duration and severity of the virus and the response by governments and consumers.
The Company will review its funding and ability to manage its cost base to meet the challenges of the current trading environment and will update further on 26 March 2020.
Vast Resources (LON:VAST) 0.21p £21.57m
Update on progress at its Baita Plai Polymetallic Mine “Baita Plai” in Romania following President Iohannis declaring a state of emergency in Romania as of Monday 16th March in a response to Covid-19.
The Company has spent the weekend putting in place all the necessary precautions to adhere to the guidelines being put in place whilst ensuring it maintains the implementation programme to bring Baita Plai into production with minimal disruption in order to meet the timeframe stated in the previous announcement made on 11th March 2020.
Big Sofa Tech (LON:BST) SUSPENDED
Big Sofa Technologies announces that its directors have taken the difficult decision to request a suspension in the trading of its shares on AIM. The Company, which currently has sufficient working capital until May 2020, had been in the process of finalising a planned equity raise to fund the next stage of its growth. That fundraising was expected to close last week but, due to current market turbulence, it could not be concluded. The Directors are therefore exploring strategic options which may include a sale of the business; the Company will provide a more detailed update in the next few days.