News blog

Helius Energy

• BY: Andrew Hore |
• POSTED: 18/02/2013 |

Helius Energy intends to raise up to £5.2m from a placing and one-for-15 open offer at 12p a share.

Helius develops and operates biomass-fuelled renewable energy generation plants and needs plenty of cash to do this. The shares are being issued at a one-fifth discount to the previous closing price and closing date for the open offer is 5 March.

At 14.5p a share, down 0.5p, Helius is valued at £19.3m.

This is unlikely to be the last share placing by Helius because it is a long way from generating cash from its business.

Revenues improved from £148,000 to £310,000 in the year to September 2012. A small profit has been turned into a loss of £10.8m even though admin costs have been cut. In the previous year there was a book gain on the sale of a controlling interest in a subsidiary partly offset by an adjustment of an earn-out. Last year, there was an impairment charge of £1.09m and a £8.8m write-down on the value of the earn-out receivable. The earn-out for the Stallingborough project which was acquired by RWE has been written down to nil because of delays and the outlook for electricity prices.

The cash outflow from operations fell from £2.1m to £1.61m and £3.2m invested in projects.  Net cash improved from £555,000 to £1.97m, having raised £6.25m via a placing at 16p a share during the year.

Helius expects to reach financial close on its 100MW Avonmouth project in the first half of 2013. This project will cost £300m. An application to develop the 100MW Southampton facility will be submitted in the next few months.

The £60.5m CoRDe joint venture project — a 7.2MW biomass CHP project in Rothes, Scotland – has been financed and is nearly complete so it should be up and running in the second quarter of 2013. This will use distillery waste and wood chip.

Download the latest AIM Journal from http://www.hubinvest.com/AIMPDFFebruary2013_41.pdf