News blog
Apace Media
- BY: Andrew Hore |
- POSTED: 01/03/2009 |
Apace Media is raising £1m gross via a share placing at 2p a share.
That is higher than the current share price. At 1.75p a share, Apace is currently valued at £1.68m. The shares have not traded at 2p since October 2008.
Apace, which has content production and broadcasting operations in the UK and Eastern Europe, says that it will not receive any cash inflows from operations in the near future. At the end of June 2008, net debt was £908,000. That includes £750,000 of a £1m facility to finance TV productions. The new cash is required to finance existing TV productions and for working capital.
Balkan Advisers EOOD, which is controlled by Apace chief executive Didier Stoessel, is subscribing for the shares. Stoessel is borrowing £800,000 from a Societe Generale facility.
Stoessel currently owns 29.4% of the existing share capital of Apace. The new shares are equivalent to 34.3% of the enlarged share capital. Balkan/Stoessel will end up with just over half the company.
Shareholders are being asked to waive the requirement for Stoessel to make a mandatory bid for the company. Last year, Balkan Advisers employee Anatoli Belchev was issued 1.7% of Apace in lieu of performance related fees. The Takeover Panel says that Belchev should have been considered a connected party, which would have taken the Concert Party holding to more than 30%. This should have triggered a mandatory bid. The Takeover Panel says this was an inadvertent mistake.
However, if the bid waiver is not agreed by shareholders at a meeting on 17 March 2009 the Concert Party will consider ways to reduce its stake to less than 30%. However, one of the Societe Generale’s requirements for the use of its facility is that Stoessel owns at least 50.1% of Apace.
The net asset value of Apace was £12m at the end of June 2008, which includes a valuation of £5m for the 50% stake in eastern European TV channels operator Balkan Media Group. Apace expects to make a small profit for 2008, although there will be a small operating loss in the second half of the year.
© 2024 Aim Micro. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
- Browse by issue
- All issues
- Popular tags
- All tags
- AIM Micro feeds
Keep up to date with articles published at AIMMicro.com. Subscribe to AIM Micro RSS Feeds
|