Hybridan Small Cap Feast

Joiners: RC365 Holding has joined the Main Market (Standard). Founded in Hong Kong in 2013, the Group is a fintech solutions service provider in China and Hong Kong, and is looking to expand its payment gateway services into Europe and the UK. In connection with Admission, the Company successfully raised approx. £2m for the Group at a price of 6.2p per ordinary share. At the Issue Price, the Company’s market capitalisation will be approx. £6.7m.

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Breakfast Buffet  

AB Dynamics 1,110p  £251m (ABDP.L)

The designer, manufacturer and supplier of advanced testing, simulation and measurement products and services to the global transport market, issues a trading update in advance of the publication of its interim results for the period ended 28 February 2022. The Board is pleased with the progress made against its strategy, with performance for the six months ended 28 February 2022 in line with the Board’s expectations. Whilst the current operating environment still presents challenges in relation to potential supply chain disruption, operational output has not been adversely affected to date and the Group has been successful in mitigating inflationary cost pressures through price increases for new orders. Underlying demand conditions in our key markets and customer activity levels have resulted in a positive book to bill ratio being maintained throughout the first half. Whilst mindful of ongoing geopolitical uncertainty, the Board’s expectations for the year are unchanged.  Robust operating cash generation continues to fund investment and the resulting positive free cash flow leaves net cash, as at 28 February 2022, up £5.4m to £27.7m (28 February 2021: £33.1m, 31 August 2021 £22.3m), which leaves the Group in a strong position from which to drive further strategic progress.

CIP Merchant Capital  62.5p  £34.4m (CIP.L)

Further to the Company’s announcement of 16 March 2022, in relation to the Final Offer by Corporation Financière Européenne S.A., at a price of 60 pence per Ordinary Share, the Board announces, having duly considered the Final Offer and consulted with its financial adviser, Strand Hanson Limited, that, once again, it unanimously and unequivocally rejects the Final Offer. The Company will shortly be posting a final response circular to CIP’s shareholders in respect of the Final Offer. The Final Offer significantly undervalues CIP on reasonable and relevant NAV metrics, representing: a discount of approximately 29.4% to the Company’s Latest NAV per Ordinary Share; and a discount of approximately 19.8% to the Company’s Liquidity Adjusted NAV per Ordinary Share.

Cropper (James) 1,075p  £102.7m (CRPR.L)

The advanced materials and paper products group, today issues an update on trading and the impact of worldwide wholesale gas price rises. As previously announced, the Group has experienced strong demand throughout the year and across all divisions, with over 30% sales growth in the current year to 26th March 2022, which is ahead of previous market expectations. However, as a direct result of the wholesale gas price increases impacting Q4 and subsequently, the profitability of the Paper division, expectations for the full year will be for adjusted PBT for the Group of £3.5M (FY2021: £1.1M) against previous market expectations of adjusted PBT of £4.9M. While the situation in Ukraine has resulted in uncertainty concerning the Paper division’s input costs in the short term, the long term opportunity for the Group remains positive, the Company is encouraged the ability to flex pricing to respond to rising input costs. Building on a strong track record of growth, the year is expected to deliver a new sales high across the Group. Strong financial position, with transformation programmes well in advance to transition away from natural gas across all Group divisions. The Group has recently secured new credit facilities to support investments and other growth programmes. The £4m Government provided COVID related loan facility, CLBIL, has been repaid in full and undrawn facilities stand comfortably at £20m. 

Futura Medica 27.6p  £79.3m (FUM.L)

Futura Medical plc, a pharmaceutical company developing a portfolio of innovative products based on its proprietary, transdermal DermaSys® drug delivery technology and currently focused on sexual health and pain, today announces it has entered into a licensing agreement with A. Menarini Korea Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Menarini Group, for the exclusive rights to commercialise the Company’s topical, gel-based Erectile Dysfunction (ED) treatment MED3000 in South Korea. Futura is eligible to receive an initial upfront payment. Menarini Korea to pay an agreed price to Futura for the manufacture and supply of MED3000 by Futura’s Contract Manufacturing Organisation. Menarini Korea is responsible for all local MED3000 development, regulatory approvals, product launch  and marketing.

Pennant International Group 38.5p  £14m (PEN.L)

The global provider of training technology and integrated product support solutions provided an update. The contract for the Major Programme has now been formally awarded to Pennant by Boeing Defence United Kingdom Limited (BDUK). The contract is for the significant redesign and upgrade of several Apache training devices in support of the UK Apache Mk 2 programme. The contract value is £8.8m and, being an ‘engineered-to-order’ programme, the associated revenue will be recognised over the next three years on a ‘cost-to-complete’ basis. BDUK is a new customer for Pennant. The Group has also finalised and signed contracts for the supply of software and services to a new customer in the North American commercial aerospace market (an opportunity mentioned in the Group’s announcement of 20 January 2022). The contract is worth circa $1.8m, comprising software licences to be supplied this financial year, consultancy services and a multi-year maintenance package. Pennant has also received an order worth up to £250k from UK Defence for the supply of the Group’s sophisticated, proprietary rotary-wing aircraft systems training software and related maintenance services. Taking into account orders received since the year-end, the Group’s three-year order book now stands at £32m (of which circa £13m is scheduled for delivery in 2022, and £12m in 2023).

Quartix Technologies 380p  £183.8m (QTX.L)

Quartix Technologies plc, one of Europe’s leading suppliers of vehicle telematics services and driver analytics, issues a  trading statement ahead of its Annual General Meeting later today. The Board reports that the strong growth in new installations experienced in January and February has continued into March. Based on units installed to date, and those expected during the remainder of the month, the total for the first quarter is anticipated to represent an increase of around 25% compared with the same period in 2021. The annualised recurring revenue increase was significantly ahead of the growth rate in the first quarter of 2021, with an increase of approximately £0.7m during the quarter on a constant currency basis. Attrition and average revenue per unit were broadly consistent with 2021 performance. The Board therefore considers that trading for the first three months of 2022 is consistent with meeting market expectations for the year. Richard Lilwall, Chief Executive Officer of Quartix Technologies plc, commented: “We are delighted with the increase in our installed base in the first quarter. As we have previously announced, we will continue to invest in new sales driving initiatives (initially and particularly in the US) and enhanced features in our product offering, to drive further growth during the rest of the year.”

RWS Holdings 340p  £1,331.7m (RWS.L)

The provider of technology-enabled language, content and intellectual property services, announces that it has acquired Liones Holding B.V.  for EUR17.5m (on a cash-and-debt free basis) with additional payments of EUR2.5m due on each of the first and second anniversaries of completion. The flagship product of Liones is Fonto, the leading cloud native, data driven authoring solution for mission critical documents. The Fonto suite of products allows non-technical subject matter experts to create, edit and collaborate on structured documents by hiding the complexity of the underlying mark-up languages. Liones, based in The Hague, Netherlands, will continue to be managed by its founders, Jan Benedictus and Taeke Kuyvenhoven, and will seek to build on its historic record of strong revenue growth. In the year ended 31 December 2021, Liones recorded an operating profit of EUR2.0m (2020: EUR1.2m) on revenue of EUR4.9m (2020: EUR3.5m) from clients in a range of sectors including Life Sciences, Pharmaceuticals and Financial Services. The acquisition will be funded from RWS’s existing cash resources.

Tern 14.25p  £50.2m (TERN.L)

The company focused on value creation from Internet of Things technology businesses, notes that Wyld Networks AB  has announced that it has received a purchase order for its Wyld Connect IoT module from a Brazilian company for deployment in the forestry sector.  The purchase order has a total value of SEK 11.3m (approximately £900k) over a three-year period, starting in 2022. Tern holds 58.7% of Wyld Networks’ issued share capital, which is quoted on the Nasdaq First North Growth Market in Stockholm. The Wyld Connect solution being supplied will allow Wyld’s new customer to deploy IoT sensors in the forestry market to collect data from hard-to-reach areas directly from satellites. Wyld’s sensor-to-satellite module suite with LoRaWAN® allows IoT sensors to communicate directly from sensor to Low Earth Orbit satellites or in conjunction with terrestrial LoRa networks. Wyld’s modems, devices, and embedded technology are designed to enable communication with the cloud, no matter the location, providing global IoT coverage.

TPX Impact  Holdings 195p  £172.3m (TPX.L)

TPXimpact Holdings PLC, the technology-enabled services company focused on digital transformation, announces the conditional acquisition of the entire issued share capital of both Peak Indicators Ltd  and Swirrl IT Ltd. The Acquisitions are strategically important to TPX, significantly expanding the Group’s capabilities in artificial intelligence (AI), data science and analytics. Together they will form TPX impact’s AI & Data capability, opening a new market opportunity that the Company has so far addressed by working with associates. With 65 full-time staff members, this new capability will be positioned to assist clients across TPX’s target sectors in gaining stronger insights to aid their decision making. The revenue from the Acquisitions, combined with the Group’s existing revenue growth at the top end of market expectations, puts the Group on track to hit its FY23 £100m run rate revenue target around a year ahead of plan. Full year revenue for FY22 is also anticipated to be in-line with market expectations.

WANdisco 336p  £200m (WAND.L)

The LiveData company, today announces a deal worth $1.5m with a top ten global telecommunications company. The Customer will utilise WANdisco’s LiveData Migrator (LDM) and LiveData Migrator for Azure (LDMA) to automate the migration of Hadoop data to AWS and Azure. This contract is structured as a Commit-to-Consume transaction. The Customer is one of the largest global service suppliers of Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Currently, it collects data from smart meters and loads that data to an on-premise Hadoop cluster. The Customer will use WANdisco’s LDM and LDMA products to migrate that data from an on-premise Hadoop cluster to multiple cloud providers (Azure and AWS). This initial opportunity is to migrate 8 petabytes of data from Hadoop to the cloud with the potential to extend this use case across architectures and geographies. In the future, the Customer plans to change the architecture so that the smart meter data is transferred directly from the smart hubs (edge platforms) to the cloud, while eliminating the use of Hadoop. Under WANdisco’s Commit-to-Consume contract structure, WANdisco’s revenues from this Customer will grow beyond the initial $1.5m as the Customer migrates an increasing amount of data.

What’s cooking in the IPO kitchen?

According to Proactive Investors, SpectrumX Holdings Ltd, which is tapping the healthcare and commercial potential of hypochlorous acid, is considering a London listing. It is understood the group has submitted its prospectus to the London Stock Exchange ahead of a float in late spring, targeting a valuation of around £50m. Sources suggest that a £10m pre-IPO round is largely complete, with the group looking to bring in circa £5m at the time of the company’s stock market debut.

Asimilar Group plc, currently listed on AIM, intends to the join Aquis Stock Exchange Growth Market. The Group invests in the technology and software sectors and aims to focus primarily on opportunities in the Big Data, Machine Learning, Telematics and Internet of Things areas. Whilst the Directors are principally focused on making investments in private businesses, they do not rule out investments in listed businesses if this presents, in their judgment, the best opportunity for Shareholders. Expected 4 April 2022.

Probiotix Health plc intends to join the Aquis Stock Exchange Growth Market. ProBiotix develops probiotics (live microbes that, when ingested, can alter the composition of the microbiome, and improve human health) to tackle cardiovascular disease and other lifestyle conditions which are affecting growing numbers of people across the world. Mkt Cap and Capital to be raised TBC. Expected 31 March

Aquis Exchange (AQX.L) the exchange services group, announced its intention to apply for admission of the Group to trading on the Apex Segment of the Aquis Stock Exchange Growth Market. Aquis’ shares will continue to trade on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange plc to satisfy certain regulatory requirements. The Group is targeting admission to the AQSE Growth Market on 29 March 2022.

Anglesey Mining, a UK mining company currently listed on the Main Market (Premium) intends to move to AIM. Anglesey’s principal asset is a 100% interest in the Parys Mountain copper-zinc-lead-gold-silver project on the island of Anglesey in North Wales. Anglesey is currently exploring and developing the property, which has a high potential for the discovery of additional mineral resources through the development of a new, modern mine in an environmentally sustainable manner. Anticipated Mkt Cap TBC, current capitalisation c£8m. Expected 8 April 2022.

Summerway Capital plc, (AIM:SWC) to be renamed Celadon Pharmaceuticals plc following completion of the acquisition of Vertigrow Technology Ltd, is to relist on AIM. Vertigrow is a UK based pharmaceutical Company specialising in the researching, growing and supply of medicinal cannabis, for a total consideration of £80m. Summerway is an investing company focused on investment and acquisition opportunities across the healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors, particularly within new and emerging therapeutic areas. Capital to be raised on admission £8.5m. Anticipated Mkt Cap approximately £101.8m. Due 28 March 2022.

Cordiant Global Agricultural Income plc intends to float on the Main Market (Premium). The Company’s investment objective will be to seek to provide an attractive yield, with potential capital growth, by providing secured medium-term finance to the global agricultural sector. The Company will seek to promote more sustainable crop production and help address a capital solutions gap which exists in the agricultural sector in select regions. The Company will provide finance for crop inputs and for capital investment in new technologies and infrastructure which help increase crop yields and have a sustainable benefit. Mkt Cap and Capital to be raised TBC.

Shellraise plc, to join AQSE Growth Market. The Company will focus on identifying investment opportunities in companies operating in the viticulture sector which require funding to increase output. Mkt Cap and Capital to be raised TBC. Expected 1st April 2022.

Carbon Air, a nano-technology company which leverages the adsorption properties of activated carbon and other advanced materials to improve suspension systems, enhance acoustics or reduce noise, to join AIM. The Company’s proprietary technology has allowed it to develop a unique portfolio of solutions for a variety of sizeable end markets, including vehicle suspension systems, acoustic insulation for domestic appliances and micro-speakers for smartphones. Mkt Cap and Capital to be raised TBC. Due Late March.

Recycling Tech Group to join AIM, a UK-based engineering, research and manufacturing company that has developed a modular and mass producible machine, the RT7000, which processes hard to recycle plastic waste into a synthetic oil that can be sold back to the petrochemicals industry as a chemical feedstock to make new plastics. Mkt Cap and Capital to be raised TBC. Due early April 2022.

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