(Alliance News) - Avacta Group PLC on Thursday said it intends to raise up to GBP48 million through share placing, subscription and a retail share offer.
The Affimer biotherapeutics and reagents developer expects to issue 40.0 million shares at a price of 120 pence each. The size of the fundraise was increased to GBP48 million from GBP45 million as a result of a significant retail demand for its shares.
Shares in Avact were trading 7.6% higher on Thursday at 149.00p a share, giving Avacta a market capitalisation of GBP311.1 million.
finnCap is acting as nominated adviser and finnCap, Zeus Capital and Beech Hill Securities are acting as joint brokers.
The company said it will use the proceeds from the fundraising for rapid scale-up of diagnostics business and to accelerate expansion of pipeline of differentiated cancer therapies.
Turning to trading, Avacta said revenue for the 17 month period to the end of 2019 have doubled to GBP5.5 million from GBP2.8 million for 12 months ended July 31, 2018.
Importantly, revenue from the Affimer diagnostics business have grown, over the same period, by more than two times, as more customer evaluations of the Affimer platform are underway.
The company's order intake and sales pipeline into 2020 are the strongest to date, it said.
By Evelina Grecenko; evelinagrecenko@alliancenews.com
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Avacta Group (AVCT)