31 Oct 2016 16:14
NOT FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART IN, INTO, OR FROM ANY JURSIDICTION WHERE TO DO SO WOULD CONSTITUTE A VIOLATION OF THE RELEVANT LAWS OF SUCH JURISDICTION
THIS ANNOUNCEMENT CONTAINS INSIDE INFORMATION AS STIPULATED UNDER THE MARKET ABUSE REGULATIONS (EU) NO. 596/2014 ("MAR")
31 October 2016
Arria NLG plc
("Arria NLG" or the "Company")
Update on trading and proposed NZX listing
Arria NLG (AIM: NLG), a leader in Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Generation ("NLG"), is pleased to provide the following updates.
Update on the proposed listing on the New Zealand Stock Exchange ("NZX Listing"), Australian Stock Exchange and Main Market of the London Stock Exchange.
The Board of Arria NLG is pleased to announce that:
1. it has now submitted the draft offer document (required in connection with the NZX Listing) to the New Zealand Financial Markets Authority (FMA) for review; and
2. an explanatory circular will soon be mailed to all shareholders in order to approve and implement moving Arria NLG's primary listing to the New Zealand Stock Exchange (the "NZX") and cancellation of trading on AIM of the Company's ordinary shares and warrants.
Further announcements on this matter will be made in due course.
Update on financial position and trading
The Company's financial results for the year ended 30 September 2016 will be announced in the coming weeks. The Directors of Arria NLG are pleased to announce that they expect both revenue and adjusted loss before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation to be in line with the Board's expectations. As anticipated, the rapidly increasing inbound demand for the Company's NLG technologies that was experienced in the last quarter continues to gather momentum in this quarter. The Company continues to invest in developing its NLG technologies and in building its capabilities to deploy its technologies and support its customers globally.
Arria NLG continues to fund the on-going development of its NLG technologies and expansion of its markets through the private placement of its securities to raise funding. Arria NLG's capital requirements are supported by its founding shareholders who, since inception, have arranged over £35 million of capital for the Company, and over £3m has been committed within the last four months as momentum for Natural Language Generation gathers speed. The Board of Arria NLG is very pleased to announce that this group of founding shareholders has again reaffirmed its on-going commitment to funding: 1) Arria NLG's core development and expansion plan; and 2) the substantial professional fees (legal, accounting, audit, tax, etc.) being incurred in multiple jurisdictions (the United Kingdom, the USA, New Zealand and Australia) in order to comply with regulatory and other requirements encountered in moving Arria NLG's primary listing away from London to New Zealand. Over the past 12 months, a substantial amount of transaction related, one-off, costs have been incurred by the Company. The Board anticipates that the accumulation of professional fees relating to the transition to the NZX will be to the long-term benefit of the Company and the nature of the process means that a significant proportion of these costs are expected to be settled in the coming weeks, supported by the receipt of funds pursuant to the loan notes mentioned below.
On 3 October 2016, the Company announced that it had received subscriptions for a further c.£2.7 million of unsecured convertible loan notes (the "Loan Notes") to meet its short term working capital requirements. As confirmed on 24 October 2016, the Company has received £622,000 of the £2.7 million relating to the Loan Notes and expects to receive the balance of c.£2.0 million in the coming weeks. The subscription agreements allow for the remaining funds to arrive in two instalments by 15 November 2016 and 15 December 2016.
As the underlying Loan Note subscriptions are denominated in US dollars the Company has not been adversely impacted from the recent weakening in Sterling; however, the final amounts received may be impacted by foreign exchange differences should Sterling recover against the US dollar in the short term.
The Board believes Arria NLG is well positioned for growth based on:
1. the increase in its revenues outside of the oil and gas sector, including financial services, power, and pharmaceuticals;
2. the beta launch of Arria NLG's first NLG powered Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) product "Recount" (www.recount.com) which has been positioned as a virtual financial coach or analyst - a real time consultant for small and medium sized businesses - which spots trends, calls out problems, forecasts what's likely to happen next and then creates insightful reports filled with relevant details, in plain language, in seconds; and
3. the beta launch of Articulator Lite (A-Lite), a cloud-based toolkit that makes simple NLG solutions available to everyone.
Sharon Daniels, Arria NLG Chairman and Interim CEO said: "We are privileged to have in our possession this extraordinary Artificial Intelligence technology at a time when the demand for AI solutions is on the rise.
"Research and Markets predicts that the Artificial Intelligence market is estimated to grow from US$419.7 million in 2014 to USD $5.05 billion by 2020, at a CAGR of 53.65% from 2015 to 2020.
"On behalf of the entire team I would like to thank all of our stakeholders for their continued support as we transition to the New Zealand capital market as our primary listing."
For further information, please visit www.arria.com or contact:
Arria NLG plc
Chairman and Interim CEO - Sharon Daniels Tel +44 (0)20 7100 4540
Allenby Capital (Nominated Adviser & Joint Broker)
Nick Naylor/Jeremy Porter/James Reeve Tel: +44 (0)20 3328 5656
MSL Capital Markets (Lead Manager)
Andrew McDouall/Justine Dunnett/Peter Lynds Tel: +64 (0)4 472 2716
Stockdale Securities (Joint Broker)
Antonio Bossi/Robert Finlay Tel: +44 (0)20 7601 6100
IFC Advisory (Financial PR and IR)
Tim Metcalfe/Graham Herring/Heather Armstrong Tel: +44 (0)20 3053 8671
tim.metcalfe@investor-focus.co.uk
graham.herring@investor-focus.co.uk
heather.armstrong@investor-focus.co.uk
Ruder Finn (PR USA)
Scott Beaver (West Coast) Tel: +1 541-326-5847
Brianna Mulligan (East Coast) Tel: +1 203-246-1304
Arria NLG
Arria NLG's core product is known as the Arria NLG Platform, a form of artificial intelligence software, specialised in extracting information from complex data sources and communicating that information in natural language (i.e. as if written by a human). The scientific foundation for the Arria NLG Platform is based on more than 30 years of research and development by the Arria Data2Text Limited founders at the University of Aberdeen. For additional information, visit www.arria.com. Follow Arria NLG on Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube.