Business systems and software company Marlowe said on Friday that it has raised around £100m in a placing as it looks to “capitalise on acquisition opportunities”.
The AIM-listed company placed just over 14.49m shares with institutional investors at 690p each, raising net proceeds of approximately £97.8m after expenses.
Announcing the placing on Thursday, Marlowe said it had a “buoyant” pipeline of acquisition opportunities and is currently in active discussions with more than 50 potential targets.
“These active opportunities, spread across the group’s Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) and Testing, Inspection and Certification (TIC) divisions, have aggregate revenues in excess of £280m and aggregate EBITDA in excess of £60m,” it said.
Four of these opportunities, with cumulative revenues of approximately £8m and cumulative EBITDA of about £2m, are in advanced stages, Marlowe added.
It said proceeds from the placing will provide it with “significant” additional resources with which to capitalise on acquisition opportunities in the short to medium term and are expected to be deployed into accretive acquisitions over the next six to 12 months.
