Small Cap Awards 2025: IPO of the Year Nominees
Held annually, the Small Cap Awards celebrate outstanding achievements in the UK’s sub-£350m market cap quoted company sector. This prestigious event brings together industry leaders, fostering trust, innovation, and excellence among smaller quoted companies.
The awards will recognise companies and participants listed on or before January 1, 2024, across various categories. Winners will be unveiled at a black-tie gala dinner on Thursday 19th June, at Merchant Taylors’ Hall, City of London
This exclusive event will be attended by institutions, fund managers, brokers, company directors, entrepreneurs, and advisors, providing a unique opportunity to connect with those driving exceptional growth and performance in the small-cap sector over the past year.
The nominees for IPO of the Year are as follows:
Helix Exploration plc
Helix Exploration is a helium exploration company with operations in Montana, North America, which aims to leverage the experience of their veteran management team to discover and develop new sources of primary helium. The helium commodity sector is currently experiencing a surge in popularity, as increasing demand from the medical and high-tech manufacturing sectors continues to drive helium price to all-time highs. Operations are focused on their flagship Ingomar Dome Project, a large-scale closure on the highly productive ‘Montana Helium Fairway’ where historic drilling has already identified gas in all target reservoir horizons. Bo Sears, author of The Disappearing Element, is the CEO. He is based in Montana, has 25 years of helium exploration and production experience and is the author of “Helium – The Disappearing Element”, which is widely regarded as the definitive textbook on helium exploration. David Minchin is the Chairman, and the ex-CEO of Helium One, which he grew from a private company with market cap of <£5m to one of the most followed stocks on AIM with a peak valuation of >£170m. Ryan Neates is CFO, and has experience across main London public markets and small cap listed exploration companies. Gregg Peters and Keith Spickelmier are the non-execs, and have extensive experience in the resources space. Gregg worked for 10 years as Director of Helium for Linde and Praxair, and Keith is an experienced lawyer and O&G entrepreneur. The Company aims to use the net proceeds raised on Admission to commence scoping studies and test drilling in 2024, with plant construction and production drilling due to commence and complete in 2025, with a first gas target of Q4 2025. Helix Exploration Plc is trading under the ticker “HEX”.
Rosebank Industries plc
The Board and the Founders of Rosebank Industries are excited to return the highly successful “Buy, Improve, Sell” model to the public markets. With the welcome support of key shareholders, Rosebank was admitted to trading on AIM in July, raising £50 million in initial capital. The company has gained a stellar register of investors, many of whom have been investors in the Rosebank team previously.
Rosebank is executing its “Buy, Improve, Sell” strategy, whereby it seeks to acquire good engineering businesses with strong market positions that would benefit from an improvement in their performance, with a view to investing in those businesses and empowering their management teams to unlock improvements and drive value and performance to generate an above average return for shareholders and ongoing benefits for wider stakeholders.
Rosebank intends to create value primarily through operational improvement, aiming to double invested equity in three to five years by eliminating unnecessary corporate overheads; changing the focus of management teams and incentivising those management teams well; driving sustainable improvement; focusing on profitability and cash generation; and reinvesting heavily to drive long-term performance.
The team’s preference is for businesses that are headquartered in either the US, the UK or Northern Europe, and are approximately $3 billion in enterprise value, funded via public equity issuance and prudent bank financing, as well as using its ordinary shares as an acquisition currency. They intend to do overlapping acquisitions seeking subsequent opportunities once they are confident improvements are substantially underway in any existing businesses, although they may be quicker with the second acquisition in recognition of the additional initial bandwidth until multiple businesses are in the Group.
Applied Nutrition Plc
Applied Nutrition is a leading sports nutrition, health, and wellness brand which formulates and creates nutrition products with a stated aim of being the world’s most trusted and innovative brand in the market.
The Company was founded in 2014 by CEO Thomas Ryder, beginning with a single product sold in the UK. The Group now sells products in over 85 countries worldwide and has a diverse product range, targeting elite athletes, gym goers and health-conscious consumers. Applied Nutrition has developed and launched four ranges under the umbrella of the Applied Nutrition brand – Applied Nutrition, ABE, BodyFuel, and Endurance. Across the four ranges, the Group sells approximately 100 different products.
The Group’s success has been built on an exceptional product range developed in-house in Knowsley, Liverpool, by a team of experts, allowing products to be developed efficiently, delivering new innovation to the market, keeping existing products up to date, and introducing products aligned with latest trends.
The Group largely operates a global business-to-business (B2B) model, which has facilitated a low risk, highly cost-effective go-to-market strategy and has enabled strong, profitable growth in the UK, Europe and other international geographies. The business model and strategy has enabled the Group to become a fast-growing, highly profitable and cash generative global supplier in the sports nutrition, health and wellness market.
Since listing on London’s Main Stock Exchange in 2024, Applied Nutrition has gone from strength to strength, launching its first TV ad starring Coleen Rooney, continuing to deepen relationships with existing customers, and entering new geographies. Applied Nutrition operates in a large and growing market, with the global sports nutrition, health and wellness market currently estimated at £189bn worldwide. The Company’s ambition remains as strong as ever and remains committed to delivering its vision of being the world’s most trusted and innovative sports nutrition, health and wellness brand.
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