Jaywing to buy Bloom Media for £2.41m after AIM share placing

The acquisition of the Leeds-based digital marketing agency, which is expected to be earnings enhancing, is payable on a cash and debt free basis, and will be financed from funds raised through a placing with new and existing investors and from a new bank debt of £1m. An additional £5.75m is payable subject to performance criteria over the next two years.

The placing is expected to raise £3m before expenses through the issue of 10m new ordinary shares of 5p each at 30p per share. Following admission to AIM, the company will have about 86.2m ordinary shares and an additional 99,662 ordinary shares held in treasury.

From the funds raised through the share placing, £2.3m will be used to pay upfront for the acquisition, £700,000 for an investment in its subsidiary Newco for product development, £500,000 on legal, accountancy and transactions costs and £500,000 on the removal of the extended temporary bank overdraft for a recent acquisition.

The Bloom Media acquisition is expected to accelerate the company's international growth strategy and provide it with innovative digital products, including a social media and behavioural analytics tool, and personnel expertise. Current Bloom Media chief executive Alex Craven will remain with the company and lead product development.

The company bought Australian marketing agency Digital Massive in July to broaden its product set.

Jaywing chief executive Martin Boddy, said: "This acquisition is a fundamental building block in our strategy to distribute data science-led products internationally. It gives us additional products and an experienced individual to lead that part of our business. Alex and his team are a great cultural fit and I'm absolutely delighted to have them as part of the team."

Craven added: "Jaywing's impressive data science credentials and its product strategy are very exciting to me personally. In addition, the breadth and scale of Jaywing's client base as well as its recent acquisition in Australia provide an ideal platform for the Bloom Intelligence suite."

Jaywing said it is currently trading in line with market expectations after an encouraging start to the year.

For the year ended 29 February, Bloom Media generated gross profit of £1.9m and profit before tax of £279,000. Its gross assets at February was about £760,000.

Shares in Jaywing were down 1.67% to 29.50p at 1351 BST.