It’s been a tough 18 months for the market’s minnows with funding taps firmly rusted shut.
However, based on the action seen in the past week or so, somebody may have found a can of WD40.
A case in point is Scancell (down 13% at 11.15p), which earlier in Friday’s session revealed it significantly upgraded its fundraiser, which was oversubscribed.
This meant it brought in £10.7 million, compared with £6 million it was seeking. The figure could swell by a further £2 million if an open offer of stock is successful.
On its own, this means very little. Scancell has enjoyed some impressive clinical success with a cancer immunotherapy targeting melanoma, which means there is a bit of buzz around the stock.
Scancell (down 13% at 11.15p), which earlier in Friday’s session revealed it significantly upgraded its fundraiser, which was oversubscribed
However, it is one of a flurry of fundraisers of late. We led last week’s report with the Videndum (off 5% at 321.25p), the maker of hardware and software used in film, TV and content creation, which raised £125 million.
The one thing the Scancell and Videndum cash calls have in common is that neither had to radically discount the price of their shares to get investors to bite.
Ondine Biomedical (up 7% at 9.09p), the medical devices group, is in the throes of placing that’s being done at a modest premium to the prevailing price.
Add to that list Great Southern Copper and CleanTech Lithium, which both brought in new cash without having to massively drop the price of the stock, and you have the basis of a narrative.
Good projects, assets or investment stories are attracting cash, those seeking working capital to keep the lights on are not.
Where RUA Life Sciences sits on that continuum is anyone’s guess. It raised a decent slab of money – £4 million – but took a 44% haircut issuing shares at 11p to get away its fundraiser.
Turning to the wider market, the AIM All-Share was moribund at 715.78, marginally underperforming the FTSE 100, which rose 0.28% over the trading week.
In the US, AbbVie has made a $10 billion swoop for ImmunoGen, a specialist in antibody-drug conjugates (ADC), which target cancer cells more precisely, potentially reducing harm to healthy cells.
While the deal had a ripple impact on the share prices of US companies developing ADC-based drugs, the impact wasn’t felt on this side of the Atlantic, with local champion BiVictriX marking time at 11.4p.
AIM’s top performer was in an adjacent area. Fusion Antibodies discovers, supplies and re-engineers proteins used in targeted drugs.
It rose 88% to 6.25p over the week with the stock buoyed by a tie-up with America’s National Cancer Institute, which will use Fusion’s OptiMAL technology for the discovery of antibodies targeting cancer.
Turning to the losers, Totally, which provides front-line healthcare services, fell 51% to 4.7p as it revealed the financial impact of losing a key NHS contract with revenues falling 21% to £55.8 million, resulting in a loss of £1.9 million.
Sondrel dropped 47% on Friday to 7p after Siemens Industrial Software dumped a line of stock in the UK tech minnow, selling at 6p a share.
MusicMagpie, which buys and sells used smartphones, was off 28% at 14.29p after two would-be buyers, one of which was BT, walked away.
In a statement, BT said that ‘it is not intending to make an offer’ for the firm, while musicMagpie said Aurelius Investment Advisory Ltd has also said it does not intend to make an bid.
Finally, Resourcing Tomorrow is the conference of the year for small-cap diggers, so it was good to see the miners doing well this week even if the mood on the conference hall floor was subdued.
Empire Metals (up 53% to 10.74p) weighed in with some more impressive drill results from its titanium asset in Western Australia. Anglesey Mining (up 38% at 12.88p), Hummingbird (up 24% at 12.65p) and Capital Metals (up 21% at 4.8p) were all well bid.
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