Discoverie raises £55m in placing to help fund acquisitions

(Sharecast News) - Discoverie said on Friday that it has raised £55m in a placing to help fund two acquisitions.
The FTSE 250 company placed a total of just over 5.35m shares at 1,028p each. It had originally planned to raise around £45m but decided to increase the placing size "following significant institutional demand in the bookbuild from existing and new investors, and in light of the strong pipeline of near term acquisition opportunities".

Discoverie, which designs, manufactures and supplies customised electronics to industry, said the placing was carried out to help fund the acquisition of US-based Beacon for $80.5m and UK-based Antenova for £18.2m.

Beacon is a designer, manufacturer and supplier of custom System on Module (SOM) embedded computing boards and related software, while Antenova designs and manufactures antennas and radio frequency modules for industrial connectivity applications.

Chief executive Nick Jefferies said: "The earnings accretive acquisitions of Beacon EmbeddedWorks and Antenova continue our strategy of building a high quality, high margin international group that designs and manufactures differentiated and customised electronics.

"Both Beacon and Antenova have long-established track records of supplying high quality products, mostly into our core target markets, and are therefore well-positioned to exploit a range of growth opportunities . We are delighted to welcome the businesses and all their employees into the group."

At 0840 BST, Discoverie shares were up 11% at 1,140p.