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Anpario 545p  £130.0m (ANP.L)

AGM Statement from the independent manufacturer of natural sustainable animal feed additives for health, nutrition and biosecurity. “Group sales for the five months to 31 May 2022 are just ahead of last year which we consider a good performance given China’s recent Covid lockdown and the Russia – Ukraine conflict, both of which have affected our sales performance. As anticipated, we experienced significant raw material price inflation, which has remained at elevated levels, and combined with historically high logistics costs has led to a fall in our gross margins. We have though, as a priority, been successfully passing on this inflation through planned sales price increases and overheads are being closely managed. To mitigate the continued disruption in global supply chains we have increased finished goods inventory in our subsidiaries worldwide and increased raw material stockholding at our production site following the recent expansion and upgrade in storage capacity. It is vital that we maintain continuity of supply to our customers who are experiencing significant cost pressures from the high price of animal feed. Encouragingly, international travel and tourism is increasing and should lead to a corresponding uplift in meat consumption. We are excited by the potential of both existing and new products including pHorce® which is proving its value to pig producers worried about virus-contaminated feed and as a replacement for zinc oxide (ZnO) which is banned in piglet diets from June 2022 in the European Union. Our new omega 3 supplement, Optomega® Algae, has generated a lot of interest due to its sustainable source, from which we expect to convert this interest into growing sales. The Company continues to invest in both product technology and its global sales channels to deliver effective innovative solutions for the animal production industry.”

Arecor Therapeutics 370p  £103.0m (AREC.L)

The biopharmaceutical group advancing today’s therapies to enable healthier lives, today announces that it has signed an exclusive formulation study collaboration with a top five global pharmaceutical company. Under the terms of the agreement, Arecor will use its proprietary formulation technology platform, Arestat™, to develop improved, stable, high concentration liquid formulations of its proprietary products. The Company will fund the initial development work and has the option to acquire the rights to the new proprietary formulations and associated intellectual property under a technology licensing model. Sarah Howell, Chief Executive Officer of Arecor, said: “This collaboration expands our partner portfolio of high-profile pharmaceutical companies. The growing recognition of how the Arestat™ platform can enhance a broad range of therapeutic products is testament to our expertise and innovation in formulation science. For our partners, we are able to significantly improve their products to enable patient friendly treatment regimens that are effective, safe and more convenient, which in turn can lead to better adherence and health outcomes, benefitting healthcare systems as a whole.”

ChallengerX 1.4p  £3.9m (AQSE:CXS)

ChallengerX announces the signing of a Digital Asset Monetisation Agreement with Triad Endeavour Sports & Entertainment. The agreement carries an initial term of five years and will immediately see Triad Endeavour onboarded into the CXSports Money Pages platform. Additional Money Pages will also be created for many of the events and talents which are under Triad Endeavour’s management. Triad Endeavour is an event promotion and talent management company working across sports, theatre, film, music, podcasting, and sportswear. Its headline promotion, the Ultimate Fight League (UFL), has seen a roster of esteemed fighters like Charlie Milner and Chris Duncan from leagues such as Bellator and the UFC competing. Triad Endeavour co-founder Sayed Gilani said, “We are a small team punching well above our weight and we’re forever in need of additional capital to take our UFL event to the next level. We see this agreement as an important step forward in generating much-needed revenues and growing our league.”

Genedrive 20.5p  £19.0m (GDR.L)

The near patient molecular diagnostics company, announces that the UK’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has started an evaluation of the Genedrive® MT-RNR1 test via their Diagnostics Assessment Programme (DAP). DAP evaluations are designed to provide robust recommendations on the use of new products, which is presented in the form of NICE guidance, and to promote rapid and consistent adoption of clinically innovative and cost-effective diagnostic technologies in the NHS. An independent advisory committee considers the evidence provided, makes draft recommendations for public consultation and ultimately makes final recommendations for publication in NICE guidance. The guidance produced is used by NHS commissioners, practitioners, healthcare operational managers and purchasing and procurement organisations. Genedrive’s assay is the world’s first rapid point of care test to screen infants in an urgent care setting for a genetic variant that will cause life-long hearing loss when carriers of the variant are given certain antibiotics. Those that carry the variant can then be given alternative treatments following detection of the variant by the Genedrive® MT-RNR1 test.

Goldplat 9.9p  £16.5m (GDP.L)

The Gold producer, with international gold recovery operations located in South Africa and Ghana, announced the grant of its Water Use License in South Africa. The Department of Water and Sanitation of the Republic of South Africa has authorised the water use by Goldplat Recovery (Pty) Limited (a subsidiary of the Group in South Africa), which includes the abstraction and use of water in its recovery processes and the impact of its disposal of tailings on a new tailings’ storage facility (TSF), according to the conditions set out in the license, which is valid for 12 years. The new TSF, which is adjacent to the current TSF, will be constructed over the next 4 months at a remaining cost of £350k. The new TSF is expected to have sufficient capacity to store the tailings we will produce in our current operations for the next 7 years. The new TSF will also allow us to divert all deposition from the current facility, which will provide us with the ability of processing the current facility to recover the JORC resource of an estimated 81,959 ounces of gold through a third-party facility. To process the current TSF through a third-party facility, it will require approval to install a pipeline to this third-party processing facility and will need to finalise commercial agreements with the third-party. Approval expected by the end of the current calendar year.

Immotion 4p  £16.6m (IMMO.L)

The UK-based immersive entertainment group, has entered into a three-year licensing deal for the Chinese Aquarium market. The Company will license a select number of its oceanographic virtual reality experiences under its ‘Undersea Explorer’ brand. The contract will be with Chinese Virtual Reality company, Leke VR, a company that Immotion has dealt with for the past 4 years. Each of the experiences will operate on motion platforms in a multi-seated environment. The experiences will be installed into an initial 15 aquariums on 1 July 2022, with the intention to roll the experiences out to many more aquariums. The initial installations into the 15 aquariums will total 180 seats with an annual footfall in excess of 32m visitors across all sites. Immotion will receive a licence fee of RMB 2.10 (circa £0.25) per play from each location.

IQE 32.2p  £259.1m (IQE.L)

The supplier of compound semiconductor wafer products and advanced material solutions to the global semiconductor industry,  announced a formal commitment to Net Zero carbon neutrality across its operations by 2050, in accordance with the Science Based Targets initiative. As part of this commitment, IQE will formulate science-based targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with the SBTi Net Zero Standard, which seeks to limit global warming to 1.5°C. The SBTi defines and promotes best practice in emissions reductions and Net Zero targets in line with climate science. IQE and its Board remain committed to the implementation of Environmental, Social and Governance best practice across the Group. Today’s announcement marks a significant step for IQE’s ESG Committee following its establishment in January 2022, as it continues to build upon IQE’s strategy to deliver sustainable growth. The Board-level group oversees the Group’s ESG activities and performance against commitments, such as those announced today, for the long-term benefit of all stakeholders.

NWF Group 221p  £108.6m (NWF.L)

The specialist distributor of fuel, food and feed across the UK, today announces a trading update for the year ended 31 May 2022. The Group has delivered a record year, in line with its trading update issued on 10 May 2022, and a materially stronger performance than had been expected at the beginning of the financial year. Cash generation has remained strong and the Group was cash positive at the year-end, compared to reporting net debt last year. Fuels: Outstanding performance which benefitted from very significant short-term volatility in oil prices and periods when the UK market was supply constrained. The teams in the Group’s 25 depots have focused on maintaining service to existing customers. Food: A strong performance across the year with warehouses at an effective operating capacity, and the achievement of significant efficiency improvements. The business has also been successful at passing on inflationary costs by working closely with customers and maintaining high service levels. Feeds: Good recovery in performance in the second half with the business effectively managing the commodity market price increases and volatility, particularly in the final quarter. Positively, increases in milk prices have been implemented to ensure farmers are incentivised to produce milk despite having higher energy, fertiliser, and feed price inputs. 

Thruvision 25.8p  £37.8m (THRU.L)

The leading provider of “safe distance” people-screening technology to the international security market announced the appointment of Victoria Balchin as Chief Financial Officer with effect from 1 October 2022. Victoria qualified as a chartered accountant with PwC and has held a number of finance roles with British Sky Broadcasting group plc (2000 to 2005) and SABMiller plc (2005 to 2017) before joining Spectris plc in 2017 as Group Financial Controller. In 2019, she was appointed CFO of Brüel & Kjær Vibro, a Spectris business headquartered in Germany, which was sold by Spectris in March 2021 to a large Japanese listed group.

Tintra 100p  £14.8m (TNT.L)

The rapidly innovating Bank Technology business, has filed a UK patent application to protect intellectual property that it has created as part of its rapid research and development program. The Patent is numbered GB2208742.3 and will be viewable on the Intellectual Property Office’s website at https://www.ipo.gov.uk/p-pj in due course. The Company will be seeking international patent protection for the verification and authentication of independent digital wallets, particularly, the linking of regulated and unregulated digital wallets when there is established common ownership and a desire to achieve rapid linking of those different accounts supported across disparate platforms for inter-dependent wallet operation, especially in the context of Web 3.0.”

What’s cooking in the IPO kitchen?

LifeSafe Holdings, a fire safety technology business with innovative fire safety products, intends to join AIM. LifeSafe has developed what the Directors believe to be market disrupting, eco-friendly fire safety protection products to both protect (via fire extinguishers) and detect (via carbon monoxide, smoke and heat alarms) fires. At the centre of the Group’s product range is the FER1000 extinguishing fluid, which has been developed by LifeSafe to extinguish five different types of fire: electrical, paper, textiles, cooking oil, and petrol and diesel. The Group’s best-selling product using this patent pending extinguishing fluid is the StaySafe 5-in-1 fire extinguisher. It was launched on Amazon Prime in the UK in August 2021 and subsequently became Amazon Prime’s top selling fire extinguisher in the UK in the same month. In n the year ended 31 December 2021, the Group generated revenues of £670k and a loss post taxation of £1.5m. £3m to be raised. Due early July 2022.

Disko Exploration. Bluejay Mining (JAY.L) is undertaking a review into a demerger and potential separate stock market listing, on a London based stock exchange of its wholly owned subsidiary Disko Exploration Limited. Disko currently holds the following interests: 1. Disko-Nuussuaq nickel-copper-cobalt-PGE project in Greenland which entered into a definitive joint venture agreement with KoBold Metals Company to execute an extensive exploration program in 2022 for battery metals (49% owned by Disko).  2. Kangerluarsuk, a 100% owned lead-zinc-silver project in Greenland. 3. Thunderstone, a 100% owned gold-base metals & REE project in Greenland. Timing TBC.

Altona Rare Earths, the AQSE listed mining exploration Company focused on the evaluation, acquisition and development of Rare Earth Elements mining projects in Africa, intends to join the Main Market. Admission to trading of the Company’s Ordinary Shares on the AQSE Growth Market will be cancelled simultaneously with Admission. It is also proposed that on Admission, the Company will change its EPIC from AQSE:ANR to REE.  The Company also seeks to raise funds to finance its current and future rare earths mining projects in Southern and Eastern Africa. Due June 2022.

*A corporate client of Hybridan LLP

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