Small-cap advanced materials engineering group Versarien had a week worth celebrating with a gamut of fresh international licensing agreements announced to the public.
First off, Versarien announced the sale of its South Korean plant and equipment to MCK Tech for £604,000 alongside an exclusive licensing agreement for five patents.
This move is part of Versarien’s strategy to offload non-core assets, including the Korean plant acquired from Hanwha Aerospace in 2020.
The transaction also includes an exclusive licence for MCK Tech to use Versarien’s patents in Korea, with payments pegged at 4.5 per cent of sales revenue from products using these patents.
One of Versarien’s businesses is Manchester University spin-out 2-DTech. It makes graphene, which is extracted from graphite and is made up of pure carbon
Then came the announcement of a five-year licensing deal with Brazilian-headquartered multinational business Montana.
Montana was granted use of Versarien’s Graphinks branded goods, such as dispersions and formulas, for its own products.
Celebrate, the market did, with Versarien’s shares soaring 58 per cent throughout the week.
There was less to celebrate in the wider stock market, albeit not much to commiserate either, with the AIM All-Share Index approaching the end of the week essentially flat at 739.
Mid-week trades were buoyant though, with the markets repricing expectations of when the Bank of England will make its first rate cut after an ONS labour market report showed softening in several areas, including weaker wage growth.
On the blue-chip front, the FTSE 100 notched up a three-month high on Wednesday on the back of this data. Though it retreated a little bit in the latter half of the week, footsie managed to close up over one percent higher.
Immupharma was a top riser in the biotech space. The developer of peptide-based therapeutics announced it is set to participate in the BIO-Europe Spring gathering, touted as a ‘premier partnering event, designed to provide biotechnology companies with the opportunity to present to and connect with investors together with the global biopharma community’.
Capital Metals led the charge in the mining sector, rallying 40 per cent after Sheffield Resources acquired a 10 per cent stake in the minerals sands company as part of a £1.25million investment at a bumper premium.
In the tech space, Smartspace Software agreed and recommended the terms of a takeover by Sign in Solutions to its shareholders, seeing it valued at £28.35million. Shares added 30 per cent.
A corporate update from supercapacitor manufacturer CAP-XX was met with a lead-balloon response, as the board warned of a pressing need for financing or face administration.
‘In this eventuality, it is not known how much, if any, value would be returned to shareholders,’ the group admitted. Unsurprisingly, shares collapsed 85 per cent.
Speaking of raising funds, communications company LoopUp Group made some concerning comments about the state of small-cap funding on the London Stock Exchange.
The group announced plans to delist from AIM to tap the private markets for capital. LoopUp’s board unanimously concluded that ‘this proposal to delist and conduct a private fundraising is in the best interests of the group and of our shareholders as a whole’.
Like CAP-XX, LoopUp has some pressing financing requirements- according to a trading update, cash at the year-end was £845,000 but it has a £6million loan from Bank of Ireland due for repayment in September.
LoopUp shares crashed 70 per cent in response.
Blue Star Capital received a major shock to the system when its stakes in Dynasty Gaming & Media and Googly Media were revalued at less than £450,000 after a combination of the two.
Blue Star had been carrying these investments at a combined valuation of approximately £5.45 million. Blue Star shares fell nearly 50% following this significant valuation decline.
Shares in second-hand electronics folks musicMagpie were also on the slide after reporting its full-year results.
It was a music playlist in fairness; although top-line revenues slipped 6 per cent, tight margin control meant pre-tax earnings climbed 15 per cent to £7.5million. For the year to November.
But there was also the issue of debt increasing from £7.9million to £13.1million in the period. Shares ultimately took the bearish route and fell 19 per cent by Friday.
