Sunday Telegraph article1 Jun 2015 21:03
Interesting article in the Business section about university spin-offs including AGM. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/industry/11625044/The-surprising-success-of-Britains-university-spin-outs.html
"Durham spin-out Applied Graphene Materials reached the market at a time when investors were clamouring for a slice of the wonderstuff, first identified at the University of Manchester in 2004, in a discovery that earned Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselo the Nobel Prize in physics.
Jon Mabbitt became chief executive of AGM shortly before it joined the stock market in 2013, having dropped his plan (and a promise he made his wife) to find work closer to their home in Derby. “I was so sold on it, I believed in where the technology could go, and also in the tangible progress they had already made,” said the engineering veteran.
The team had spent three years on working models of the production line to show to potential investors, including those that had already committed money in two rounds of private fundraising. The firm aims to find uses for graphene in energy storage, ultra-strong coatings and 3D-printing.
“If you just go to list [shares] on the promise of something with thin air, you’re probably not going to get very far. If we had any doubting Thomases when we went out, we could point to that.”
A float meant the firm was “more in charge of our own destiny – another round of private funding was a possibility, but it was with an uncertain timeline”, he added, noting that the Alternative Investment Market in London was the only place they felt a company at their stage of development could possibly garner support.
Retail investors were so enamoured with graphene that they called up the company’s advisors and existing shareholders to try and buy stock – overlooking the fact that the IPO was limited to institutions. Even now, about 10pc of the share book is retail holders, “which is a bit on the high side for a company like us”, said Mr Mabbitt. The shares trade more than 40pc below their IPO price.
IP Group was among the first investors in AGM when it was put together in 2010, even helping to hire the management team, while Professor Karl Coleman, whose research was the cornerstone of the company, also has a 10pc stake."
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