HYDG.L Share News (HYDG)

(Alliance News) - Staffing and recruitment company Hydrogen Group PLC on Tuesday said it has decided to delist shares from London's junior AIM market due to the difficulty in achieving liquidity in its shares or make use of its share quotation.

The company said that it will launch a share tender offer due to the stock delisting proposal.

"In the opinion of the board, the company is not of a scale to attract sufficient interest from institutional and other investors, and therefore it is difficult to create a more liquid market for its shares to effectively or economically utilise its quotation. Furthermore, the company has been unable to fully utilise its quotation on AIM to issue ordinary shares either as consideration or to raise fresh capital to execute acquisitions," Hydrogen explained.

Under the tender offer, the company intends to purchase up to 19.1 million shares, around 56%, at 40 pence per share, a 43% premium to Monday's closing price of 28p.

The stock was up 39% at 38.90p each on Tuesday morning.

Hydrogen called a general meeting of shareholders on September 25 to seek approval for its delisting proposal.

The company also said its first half performance was significantly hurt by the Covid-19 pandemic and led to a 93% slump in pretax profit.

For the six months to June 30, the company recorded pretax profit of just GBP79,000, down sharply from GBP1.4 million a year ago. Revenue fell by 29% to GBP45.4 million from GBP64.1 million.

Hydrogen said it has decided against paying an interim dividend. A year ago, it paid a 0.6p per share dividend.

On its outlook, the company said recovery in activity has yet to translate in to a meaningful improvement in revenue levels, and forward visibility continues to be very poor.

By Tapan Panchal; tapanpanchal@alliancenews.com

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