GB Group (LSE:GBG) (GB Group (LSE:GBG)) PLC, the electronic identity management specialist, saw 12% shaved off its share price at 773.5p after it tapped the market.
The company placed 41.4mln shares at 725p a pop raising roughly £300mln. On top of that, shareholders snapped at 689,655 shares at the same price via the PrimaryBid platform, thus raising a further £5mln or so for the company.
The company announced yesterday it would acquire Acuant, a US identity verification and identity fraud business for US$736mln (roughly £547mln).
12.45pm: STM warns on profits after cost savings take longer to come through
STM Group PLC (AIM:STM)’s shares were in the wars after the financial services provider issued a downbeat trading update.
The cross border financial services provider, which issued a profit warning about this time two years ago, said trading this year had been “frustrating”, with certain anticipated new business revenues in its UK SIPP (self-invested personal pension) business and Gibraltar life business being slower to materialise than anticipated, contributing about £0.4mln less to 2021 revenue and underlying earnings (EBITDA) expectations.
The group's EBITDA position has been further affected to the tune of £100,000 or so by a slower than anticipated reduction in its cost base following the migrations onto new information technology platforms for the UK and Gibraltar businesses; with an additional delay for the migration of the Malta business until mid-December 2021. While the majority of the savings on software fees have come to fruition, the staff resource savings have yet to substantially materialise but are expected to do so moving into 2022, STM said.
11.30am: Prime People (AIM:PRP) hails recovery in recruitment and backlog of client demand
Prime People PLC (AIM:PRP) is enjoying some prime time near the top of today's small cap leaderboard on the back of an "improvement in trading" reported in its half-year results.
The specialist recruiter said this was "a combination of general market recovery and a backlog of client demand positively impacting performance".
Executive chairman Robert Macdonald said the decision has been made to make an early repayment of £1mln of the £2mln CBILS government Covid support loan, thanks to cash collection being "robust", with all taxes deferred due to Covid to be fully paid by January as well as the intention to redeem the remaining CBILS loan.
On the outlook he said: "Although our markets are not fully back to pre-pandemic levels, we are encouraged by the recovery we have experienced in the six month period... We believe that the group is well positioned to respond quickly as markets strengthen, but we remain cautious, as any reimposition of Covid related restrictions are likely to be negative for our business."
Shares are up 9.5% at 72.84p.
10.22am: GB Group (LSE:GBG) tumbles to year's low after discounted placing
GB Group PLC (LSE:GBG) is the big faller on Friday, with its shares sinking to their lowest in over a year.
This is because the digital identity software group has issued £300mln of new shares at a discounted price of 725p, which is £1.50 less than where the shares closed yesterday.
The fundraising is to help pay for the acquisition of US-based Acuant, a specialist in identity verification and identity fraud prevention, for a cash free, debt free enterprise value of US$736mln (circa £547mln).
Acuant, says GBG boss Chris Clark, "is a business that we have worked with - and admired - for many years. The combination of our two businesses is a complementary and powerful one. Together, we are creating a global leader in Identity Verification as well as strengthening our capability to capitalise on the adjacent, emerging and fast growing identify fraud market."
9.10am: Wishbone Gold investors finally feeling a bit luckier
Wishbone Gold PLC (AIM:WSBN) investors were feeling lucky in early deals on Friday, with the shares up 36% to 11.03p as preparations were said to have begun for drilling at its Red Setter project.
Just 13km south-west of Newcrest Mining's Telfer gold-copper mine and 60km west of Greatland Gold's Havieron discovery in the Paterson Range of Western Australia, Red Setter’s latest geochemical and magnetic results also revealed a quartet of new “high priority” drill target zones.
After a year beset by delays, the company said it has started road maintenance and expects to have this completed by around next Wednesday, in time for the planned arrival of a drill rig on “approximately 29th November “.
Chairman Richard Poulden said there was a similarity of the result of the geochemical work to known deposits in the region which “is very encouraging and enables more detailed targeting of our drilling programme”.
Elsewhere, ReNeuron Group PLC (AIM:RENE) was another early riser, up 13% in early trade after independent data from the Centre for Nerve Engineering at the University College London validated the commercial potential of its pluripotent stem cell (CTX-iPSC) technology.
The results of the research revealed the product can be produced at mass scale as a therapeutic for nerve damage.
ReNeuron’s chief scientific officer, Professor Stefano Pluchino, said the results were especially encouraging as they support the idea that CTX-iPSCs “may allow for the potential to scale production of 'off the shelf' allogeneic tissue-engineered therapeutics” and so makes them “a feasible mass-scale solution for areas such as peripheral nerve repair”.