LONDON (Alliance News) - Billionaire russian businessman and investor Roman Abramovich has continued to increase his stake in small-scale gas-to-liquid technology company Velocys PLC through his company Ervington Investments Ltd.
The latest acquisition of 762,435 Velocys shares by Abramovich on May 28 is one of many over the past 12 months, which has seen his stake increase from only 6.15% at the end of May 2014 to 21.29% now.
Abramovich has steadily increased his Velocys stake via Ervington Investments, upping his stake to 7.71% in June 2014, increasing to over 9% in October 2014 and surpassing 11% by the end of November.
At the end of 2014, Abramovich held an indirect 13.1% stake in Velocys which has continued to increase in 2015. In May his stake jumped from below 15% to 18.6%, after he acquired just under 6.2 million shares and then increased to 20.8% after he purchased a further 3.0 million shares before the end of the month.
Back in September, Chief Executive Roy Lipski told Alliance News that he believed Abramovich's interest in the company was not just as an investor.
"As you know, Abramovich keeps buying shares, and it is no secret that he is interested in Velocys, and it is not purely as an investor. The kind of stuff he is involved in, let me do the maths in my head, a GBP35 million stake in a small company is not worth the time. There is clearly much more to it," said Lipski back in September.
However, Velocys is not the only company that has made it on to Abramovich's radar, as he also has invested in fellow listed AFC Energy PLC, holding a 13.3% stake in AFC at the end of October 2014.
AFC Energy is a developer of alkaline fuel cells focused on industrial application, which has brought down the lifetime cost of ownership of alkaline fuel cells. The company does not use expensive precious metal catalysts that were previously needed. Fuel cells are batteries used to power equipment off-grid.
Abramovich is also a substantial shareholder in Russian steel-maker Evraz PLC, with a 31% stake in the company as at April 20 and has made investments in Clean Air Power Ltd, a company focused on the development of dual-fuel combustion technology for heavy-duty diesel engines, which enables heavy-duty diesel engines to operate on a combination of natural gas and diesel.
Velocys shares were down 2.3% to 154.38 pence per share on Tuesday morning, whilst AFC shares were up 0.4% to 40.30p. Evraz shares were down 0.3% to 168.00p and Clean Air shares were off 5.1% to 2.11p.
By Joshua Warner; joshuawarner@alliancenews.com; @JoshAlliance
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