Versarien completes expanded £2.9m fundraising

The AIM-traded firm had initially announced the placing and offer to raise £1.2m at 18p per new ordinary share on 3 November.

On Monday, it said the fundraising received a “very strong” response, and was oversubscribed.

The offer was on a first come, first served basis and was closed early at 1755 GMT on 3 November, with the fundraising having already been over twice oversubscribed by that time.

As a result, Versarien said it had thus decided to increase the size of the fundraising in order to meet that demand.

It would now issue and allot a total of 16,144,707 new ordinary shares to satisfy the fundraising, with the gross proceeds of the fundraising before expenses being £2.91m.

Versarien said it will use the proceeds to purchase capital equipment and provide working capital to enable the various existing and prospective graphene-related collaborations with global original equipment manufacturers to be progressed.

The intended capital equipment purchases were designed to enable the company to increase the production capacity of its proprietary ‘Nanene’ few layer graphene nano-platelets by a factor of approximately 10.

“We are delighted with the support we have received for the Fundraising from both institutional and private shareholders,” said chief executive officer Neill Ricketts.

“The offer through PrimaryBid has enabled private shareholders to participate on the same terms as the institutions.

“As I stated in our trading update on 3 November, we are delighted with the progress that the group is making, particularly in our graphene related activities, where we are seeing an accelerating level of interest from multinational companies in a variety of sectors wishing to collaborate with Versarien.”

Ricketts confirmed the funds raised would allow the company to further the growth of its graphene business through the purchase of capital equipment to significantly scale up its graphene production and provide working capital for the collaborations it was entering into with global OEMs.

“We look forward to making further announcements regarding these collaborations in due course and provide further updates at the time of the release of our interim results on 29 November 2017.”