Imperial Innovations proposes £100m fundraising

Imperial Innovations, the UK technology commercialisation and investment company, said on Thursday it has proposed a £100m fundraising by way of placing 425p new ordinary shares.

The placing of 425p represents a premium of about 8.0% to the mid-market closing price of the group’s ordinary shares on 3 February, according to a company statement.

Under a clawback arrangement, 1,17m shares will be placed on Thursday to existing and new institutional investors.

The company has proposed a total of 23.52m new ordinary shares to be issued.

Proceeds of the placing will be used to deploy capital into portfolio companies, increasing its stake in existing assets and making new investments.

The company has recently committed a further £49.4m in aggregate to new funding rounds for Inivata and MISSION Therapeutics and the new UCL Technology and Apollo Therapeutics funds.

"This new funding will allow us to capitalise fully on the potential of our maturing portfolio by scaling up our investment in our most promising portfolio companies without dilution, whilst selectively adding new companies to build our pipeline for long-term value creation,” said chairman Martin Knight.

"In the first five months of this financial year we have invested £21.2m in the portfolio and added five new companies to our investment portfolio, compared to six in the whole of the previous year.”

Shares rose 6.25% to 425p at 1106 GMT.