Small caps news round-up

Enterprise cloud computing infrastructure, software and solutions company RapidCloud International announced on Friday that its Malaysian division has been appointed byAlibaba.com as an authorised ‘Gold Supplier’ membership channel sales partner for Malaysia. The AIM-traded company said the appointment will place RapidCloud as one of Alibaba.com's authorised Gold Supplier Membership channel sales partners in Malaysia.

Property investment company Palace Capital has sold its freehold vacant warehouse property in Victoria Road, Stoke-on-Trent, for £1.09m, which was slightly above book value. The 40,000 sq ft building was originally let for 35 years from 1980 to Portmeirion, but it became vacant in September of last year. It formed part of the Sequel Portfolio acquired from Quintain Estates & Development in October 2013.

West African gold miner Hummingbird Resources raised about $3.8m in a private placing with Fidelity Investments. The funds were raised through a placing of 11.1m new ordinary shares at 26p per share to invest further in its Yanfolila mine and develop additional mining resources while targeting production levels next year.

Tanzania-focused coal-to-power project developer Edenville Energy announced a proposed reorganisation of its share capital on Friday. The AIM-traded firm’s board said it believes that “significant progress” has been made over recent months on several areas of the power plant development process.

Specialty graphene materials producer Applied Graphene Materials posted a trading update on Friday, ahead of the announcement of its full year results for the year ended 31 July. The AIM-traded firm said its overall loss before tax for the year remained in line with the board’s expectations.

Mobile payment company Bango plans to expand in Asia through a memorandum of understanding with South Korean commerce company Danal Korea. Danal has a pan-Asian payment network focused on South Korea, China, Japan and Taiwan, by integrating Danal’s Asia payment network with Bango’s payment platform it will provide an additional payment route for global apps store partners.

Creative audio-visual company MediaZest posted its final results for the year ended 31 March on Friday, reporting its best ever financial results with turnover of £3.14m and EBITDA profit of £0.06m, before a non-cash share option based charge of £0.14m. The AIM-traded firm achieved 26.6% growth in turnover year-on-year, which its board put down to a combination of new business and expanding project work with its current client base.

Shares in Schroder Real Estate Investment Trust (SREI) rose on Friday after the company announced progress in the recently acquired St. John’s Retail Park in Bedford. SREI said TJX UK, trading as Homsense, has exchanged an agreement to lease a 12,100 sq ft unit on a fifteen year lease at a rent of £250,000 per annum.

AIM-listed Cloudbuy, a provider of cloud-based e-commerce marketplaces, reported a drop in turnover for the first half but said its loss narrowed and it expects full-year results to be in line with the previous year. In the six months to the end of June, turnover fell by 11% from the first half of last year to £785,000. However, the operating loss decreased to £2.35m from £3.16m, with the loss per share down to 1.9p from 2.6p.

Tool rental company Speedy Hire said it “strongly recommends” its shareholders vote against ousting executive chairman Jan Åstrand by its largest investor, Toscafund Asset Management. Toscafund has forced a special general meeting on the 9 September to oust Åstrand and on Wednesday said he should resign ahead of the meeting.