Member Info for StarBright

Debt finance from a bank (for example) might be agreed subject to planning permission. But the shape of the proposed financing here (“green bonds”) and the possibility of a grant component in the capital stack complicates early agreement.

Here’s why: The terms of any debt package will be favourably impacted if material grant funding is secured. Lower rate, improved covenants etc. Based on their history, ABG will look to place the debt with insto-ish investors from the Nordic countries. These are sophisticated counterparties, many of which will have formal credit committees and requirements to satisfy. These investors are unlikely to commit resources to confirmatory due diligence with major terms (rate, covenants) subject to change, and planning permission not settled. They are more likely to say “Come back and see us when you know where you are with grants, and planning permission has been confirmed”. It is buyers market for this type of debt right now.

This is fantastic news for the renewable sector as a whole. My understanding is that there have been plenty of buyers looking at these funds due to the elevated discounts associated with their income streams. Drax have stepped up and fired the starting gun with their offer for BSIF. I expect others will now commit - either through counterbids for BSIF or offers on other funds in the sector.

This is fantastic news for the renewable sector as a whole. My understanding is that there have been plenty of buyers looking at these funds due to the elevated discounts associated with their income streams. Drax have stepped up and fired the starting gun with their offer for BSIF. I expect others will now commit - either through counterbids for BSIF or offers on other funds in the sector.

Game very much on.

This is fantastic news for the renewable sector as a whole. My understanding is that there have been plenty of buyers looking at these funds due to the elevated discounts associated with their income streams. Drax have stepped up and fired the starting gun with their offer for BSIF. I expect others will now commit - either through counterbids for or offers on other funds in the sector.

Game very much on.

Opening offer at 92.6p + divi.

Game on. Let’s see who else is interested…

Looks like a comms agency with a contract to me. ZIOC have decided they may as well continue pumping this slop out as it adds marginally to the illusion that there’s a business being run…

….but in the meantime mindlessly spam-ramp the living daylights out of it, in the hoping of drawing in naive newbies?

…of the 325p level that has acted as resistance several times in the last year. Perhaps this time - with the background mood music for the sector so favourable - a breakout might be sustained.

FWIW I am not a great believer of TA where micro-caps are concerned - newsflow is always the key - but I do find identifying resistance points useful at times. Generally they succumb to the pressure created by the entrance of new investors with new money. Let’s hope that is the case here.

It’s just a delayed trade report from a fill earlier in the day. Stand down with the conspiracy theories…

Interesting developments. I agree with @Ex that the latest sequence has the feel of a broader governance and tidying-up exercise alongside the financing itself. The company has simultaneously undertaken an emergency-ish raise despite the supposedly transformational RAM process already being underway, settled deferred director fees in shares, expanded related-party disclosures, refreshed concert-party language, clarified various connected relationships and updated ownership disclosures. That is quite a lot of legal/governance framing for what is ostensibly a relatively modest working-capital raise. This looks less like a simple operational fundraising and more like an attempt to ensure the corporate structure, disclosures and governance documentation are properly regularised before the next stage of the RAM process.

The evidence for that is the amount of governance language around what is supposedly a straightforward working-capital raise. ZIOC says the raise was for bulk sampling, in-country overheads, corporate overheads and working capital; the bulk sample budget itself is only about US$1.6m, while the raise ended up at about US$7.7m gross after being upsized. ZIOC also disclosed that cash had fallen to only US$0.3m by 30 April 2026, so there was a genuine funding need. 

But alongside that, the company used the placing documentation to settle deferred director fees, declare related-party transactions, give refreshed director/PDMR holdings, and set out a denominator for future shareholder disclosure calculations. That is not wrong - but it does have the feel of “cleaning up”.

The bigger tell is the RAM/concert-party context. The February RAM term sheet was explicitly a related-party transaction, because RAM is backed by individuals/groups who participated in ZIOC’s 2025 fundraising, including Sir Mick Davis and Heeney Capital. It gave RAM valuable project-level rights, exclusivity, possible extensions, and a break fee payable by ZIOC in certain circumstances. 

So the regulatory-risk mitigation theory is not fanciful. The company may have reached the point where, before asking shareholders to approve a fundamental project-level transaction, it needed to make the control picture, related-party position, deferred-fee position and funding runway look cleaner and more conventionally documented.

It may simply be that lawyers/Nomad have said: before the next step, we need a fuller paper trail, cleaner disclosures, proper related-party fairness language, and no obvious working-capital crisis. Whether they have achieved that is open to debate. My view remains that some of the principal players in this soap-opera are not to be trusted.

The theory that “something else” is going here feels credible also…

JFF I have re-opened a small position at the placing price.

A few buys showing up today. It is perfectly possible that CML becomes identified with the UK-listed “defence/space adjacent” names that have done so well in the last year or so; FTC and SSIT the most obvious examples.

Obvious AI hallucination is obvious to anyone with any experience of the weaknesses of AI…

Note the progression from “explicitly stated” to “implies”. @NFTs, if you go back to your AI (ChatGPT) and challenge it again, you’ll get the “You are absolutely right to challenge that. I was being over-optimistic in my interpretation etc” response.

What I suggested is somewhat more nuanced. My view is that the market will anticipate the 1:1 conversion over time; if the ords retain a premium over NAV, the c’s will reflect this premium as conversion events approach. BUT, I think it is likely that some of this “premium-equalisation” will be realised by a reduction in the premium on the ords. There’s no magic money machine, just more spoons in the premium pot. In simple terms I think the issue of the c-shares will mark the peak point of premium expansion for the ords.

Tempted. But a sterling/funding crisis looks like a possibility when the PLP lurches to the left in “electing” a new leader. We could see 20p under such circumstances, so I will continue to wait.

I think the partial undersubscription of the C-share raise is actually a much more important signal than has perhaps yet been acknowledged. If SSIT had tried to raise £350m and received £600m of demand, you could plausibly argue that the “space mania / price-insensitive demand” phase remained fully intact.

But that didn’t happen. Instead, the company authorised up to £350m… and initially secured ~£137m despite the ords trading at a huge premium. To me, this tells us something important: whilst demand is clearly strong, it is not infinitely deep. That matters because investment trust premiums are ultimately behavioural structures. They persist only while marginal buyers continue accepting them.

The really interesting thing about the C-shares is not simply that they may themselves move to a premium over time. It’s that they introduce a competing valuation reference point into the SSIT ecosystem. Previously, investors effectively had one choice:

“Buy the exciting scarce ords at whatever premium the market decides”. Now they also have a “…mostly cash-backed version of the same franchise, with eventual participation in the same vehicle, but at a materially lower embedded premium.”

That comparison may become increasingly uncomfortable for ord holders if the premium remains extreme. Especially because the C-share structure potentially weakens the two things — scarcity and narrative coherence — that helped sustain the ord premium in the first place. The market now has a cleaner benchmark against which to judge the ord valuation.

So I suspect there is a credible scenario where the C-shares drift above 100p while the ord premium compresses lower, with the two structures gradually converging toward one another over time. Given the NAV-based conversion mechanism, some form of “premium equalisation” feels a plausible medium-term outcome.

In other words, the “arb” may not simply be “C-shares catching up”. It may equally involve ords de-rating.

Ironically, the very mechanism designed to expand the SSIT franchise may also weaken the scarcity dynamics that helped create and sustain the current ord premium in the first place.

Indeed. Obvious arb is obvious….

@JMUK26 ” Its still being priced as a very highly speculative infrastructure play.”

That’s exactly what it is…

If they could have raised the £350m now, they would have done…

Having said that, it is important to acknowledge that the £350m figure was an authorised maximum not a guaranteed or pre-committed raise. SSIT effectively asked shareholders for permission to issue “up to” 350m C-shares IF demand existed. Today’s announcement tells us what the actual institutional appetite was right now: £137m.

That is still a meaningful raise by UK investment trust standards. But I think it is well short of what they were hoping for. My sense is that management genuinely hoped momentum and sector enthusiasm would carry them much further. Remember the backdrop:

• SpaceX excitement

• defence/security narrative

• AI infrastructure narrative

• satellite boom

• SSIT trading on a huge premium to NAV

From a retail perspective that all looks incredibly bullish. But sophisticated institutions see things differently. Material premiums to venture-style NAVs can actually reduce enthusiasm because they imply sentiment is running ahead of fundamentals. Institutions know thematic enthusiasm can reverse very quickly.

There’s also a broader issue here: the UK investment trust market is still structurally fragile. Discounts, poor liquidity and weak institutional support haven’t magically disappeared just because spacetech is fashionable this year.

So what has likely happened is:

1. SSIT sounded out institutional & professional investors and were met with good engagement

2. On the basis of these conversations they secured maximum flexibility via the £350m authority

3. As the critical moment arrived, demand (intent+capacity) proved solid but nowhere near £350m immediately

4. They therefore closed an initial tranche at the available £137m

The interesting question now is whether the remaining authorised C-share capacity is ever actually used. If more tranches follow over time, then perhaps this genuinely was intended as a staged capital programme. If not, then the market has basically said: “We like the story. We’re just not £350m bullish on it.”

No scaling back with £137m raised…

“… with projected yields for investors to be 25% per annum over a 25 year lifespan…”

@tomhuk2000, could you articulate the rationale behind this statement or offer a source if it’s not your own please?