RE: Yourgene10 May 2024 06:05
Kaeren my guess is that it's a couple of factors but largely this:
'Should the Company receive the net proceeds from the Firm Placing but no proceeds from the Conditional Placing, the Rex Offer or the Open Offer, its cash runway will remain extremely limited, it will only have around seven weeks of working capital and the Company would urgently need to seek further financing which may or may not be available at all or, if available, may be on commercially unacceptable terms and could lead to more substantial dilution for Shareholders than would be the case under the proposed Fundraising.'
So £2.5m (gross) is equal to 7 weeks working capital? That's pretty extreme even if it's partly for a renewed r&d drive. There's also still a lot of uncertainty as to when significant revenues would start to be seen and no timelines for any cash flow break even goals. So an interested buyer was still probably looking at offering around £10m to be accepted by shareholders (they wouldn't have known the alternative was a 1.5p placing) and then immediately put in another £6m for initial funding.
If like you say the products are deemed so good that wouldn't be an issue for a major but for any midcap company, even cash-rich novacyt, it's a risk.