Milestone Group completes premium-price placing

Shares in AIM-listed Milestone Group shot to a year's high after a fundraising at a premium price.

Milestone, whose shares closed at 0.4p on Tuesday, completed a £0.54m fundraising at a price of 1p ahead of its annual shareholder meeting.

The company reminded investors that on the back of the launch of its Passion Project programme focused on addressing youth unemployment.

Deborah White, chair and chief executive, said Milestone had been approached by "a number of blue chip companies" to help them with the government's new Employer Ownership of Skills programme that comes into effect shortly.

The EOS programme is a competitive £340m fund open to employers to invest in training and development.

Since headlining the Apprenticeship4England event at Arsenal's Emirates stadium last month, White said the profile of the company and awareness of the Passion Project had increased.

With the EOS scheme coming into effect and combined with the Chancellor's autumn announcement of the Apprenticeship Levy, which will come into force from April 2017, White said this was "helping to realise the market opportunity for the Project".

Also updating on the Nexstar joint venture and a new mobile contract recently signed with one of the Passion Project partners, White said each of the separate parts of the business "has shown the beginnings of their revenue potential with growing interest being shown from an ever-expanding customer base and further new revenue streams visible in the near future".

Shares in Milestone traded as high as 0.911p on Wednesday and just after noon were up 88% on the day at 0.750p.