The new companies are not only joining the market, they are also raising significant amounts of money to invest in their businesses. This demonstrates that AIM investors do have an appetite for cleantech companies if those companies have strong prospects.
US water purification treatments developer HaloSource (see Halosource floats on AIM) raised £31.5 million gross at 135p a share, while existing shareholders sold £18.9 million worth of shares. Seattle-based HaloSource will use the cash to finance expansion plans, particularly in China and India, for its flagship product HaloPure, which kills bacteria and viruses in drinking water. The share price has gone to a premium.
Wind power generation developer Caparo Energy raised £50.2 million to invest in new capacity in India (see page 3). The net proceeds of the placing were £46.3 million and, on the back of the flotation, Caparo has been able to secure terms for a $101.9 million lending facility from IDFC.
However, on the negative side, other cleantech businesses are turning their backs on London’s junior market. Catalytic Solutions completed its merger with Clean Diesel and left AIM during October. Although that represents a minor loss in comparison with the companies joining AIM last month, two companies equivalent to more than 40% of the Sigma Capital Cleantech Index are about to leave AIM.
Solar wafers supplier ReneSola will drop its AIM quotation at the end of November and concentrate on its NYSE listing, having used AIM as a stepping stone. Clipper Windpower is being acquired by GE, so it will also be leaving in the near future.
Together, these two companies are valued at around £800 million. ReneSola alone accounts for one-third of the whole Sigma Capital Cleantech index. Its departure may be a mixed blessing since the index seems to follow the ReneSola share price rather than the general cleantech performance. In recent weeks the index has been strong but the sectors, other than solar, have lagged behind the index.
There are potentially more flotations in the pipeline but none, other than ProPhotonix (www.prophotonix.com), is far enough advanced to issue a Schedule 1 announcement, which sets out initial information on the company and a potential float date. However, even taking this step does not guarantee that a company will actually float.
In September, LED technology manufacturer ProPhotonix said it would be coming to the market at the end of October, but it has not appeared as yet. The company did include $194,000 of AIM admission costs in its figures for the three months to September 2010, and there were AIM costs of $511,000 in the previous quarter.
Green technology commercialisation company Novo Energies International (NEI) plans a flotation on AIM before the end of this year according to its website (www.novoenergiesint.co.uk), but no firm information has yet been published. Hong Kong-based NEI has worldwide rights, excluding the Americas, for multi-stage hybrid gasification (MSHG) technology, which converts plastic and tyre waste into a synthesic gas (syngas) that is used to generate electricity.
Montreal-based NEI retained the rights to the Americas and assigned the rights to the rest of the world to NEI, in which it has a 12.5% stake. NEI talked of raising £3 million to spend on its first international MSHG plant, and sites in Australia, Thailand and South Africa have been assessed.
Cleantech company numbers on AIM have dwindled in the past couple of years. Although there have been concerns that cleantech companies have looked to other stock markets for finance, it seems that they are still keen to come to AIM. However, investors are no longer interested in speculative technologies, and cleantech companies need to have revenues or at least a product ready to be commercialised.
Until recently, more companies were leaving AIM than were joining. However, unless the wider stock market experiences another downturn, there should be a flow of new entrants to replace those companies exiting AIM – even if they are not initially as large as the ones departing.
Andrew Hore has covered London’s Alternative Investment Market for more than a decade and is the publisher of AIM Micro: www.aimmicro.com
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
