Versarien raises over £5 million via retail investment platform PrimaryBid

By Nicky Godding

24 September 2018

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The Cheltenham-headquartered advanced materials manufacturer, Versarien, has raised £5.2 million via PrimaryBid, the online platform that enables retail investors to gain access to discounted equity offerings of publicly listed companies.

The company says the offer was well supported by investors and despite Versarien electing to increase the size of issue to meet the high level of demand the offer remained oversubscribed and closed early.

The Offer closed at 7.22 p.m. on 21 September 2018. Versarien will therefore issue and allot a total of 3,554,893 new ordinary shares to satisfy the offer.

Neill Ricketts, Chief Executive Officer of Versarien, said: "We are very encouraged by the tremendous demand generated on the PrimaryBid platform in such a short period. PrimaryBid's innovative platform allowed us to seamlessly access retail investors at the same time and terms as institutional investors. Retail investors remain an important constituent to us and we are pleased to have allowed them access to this fundraise."

Versarien is currently in advanced negotiations with Gnanomat S.L., a Spanish based company capable of using Versarien's graphene products in an environmentally friendly, scalable produc?tion process for energy storage devices that offers high power density, almost instant recharging and very long lifetimes for use in electrical vehicles and portable electronics products. If successfully concluded, Versarien will own a majority stake in that company and provide funding for the scale-up of a pilot plant. It will provide a centre of excellence for energy in Europe with access to a proporti?on of around €1bn of research funding post Brexit, and access to Spanish graphene research institutions.

By Nicky Godding

Nicky Godding is editor of The Business Magazine. Before her journalism career, she worked mainly in public relations moving into writing when she was invited to launch Retail Watch, a publication covering retail and real estate across Europe.

After some years of constant travelling, she tucked away her passport and concentrated on business writing, co-founding a successful regional business magazine. She has interviewed some of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs who have built multi-million-pound businesses and reported on many science and technology firsts.

She reports on the region’s thriving business economy from start-ups, family businesses and multi-million-pound corporations, to the professionals that support their growth and the institutions that educate the next generation of business leaders.