Inventory monetisation group Supply@Me Capital was in the news for the second day in a row off the back of updating its Captive Funding strategy to include the possibility of a direct investment into a fintech bank. This involves the signing of a commercial agreement to manage both the origination of new Client companies and a multi-annual inventory funding plan and the execution of a first inventory monetisation transaction involving a portfolio of Italian Client Companies. Supply@ME will acquire up to 10% of the Fintech Bank and an additional 10% of the Fintech Bank may be acquired at the option of the Company within the following two years. The Fintech Bank has been recently valued between €34m - €50.6m. It now remains to be seen whether this development will finally lay to rest the stone throwing by bears of Supply@Me, given that the latest RNS at least oils the wheels of its monetisation service strategy.
Another company moving a little nearer to its destination was Powerhouse Energy (PHE), as the waste plastic to hydrogen group received confirmation from DNV, the international gas process design and certification consultancy, that it has completed stage one of the validation of the enhanced design to produce 2 tonnes per day of hydrogen. The Statement of Feasibility follows detailed evaluation of the Company’s enhanced process design including features for export of the product.
There was positive news for both investment companies Pires (PIRI) and Riverfort (RGO) as their investee company Smarttech247 once again shone on the fundamental front. Smarttech247, which is a global artificial intelligence based cyber security cloud business has just won a €6m order from a global manufacturing firm. This latest win follows on from last week’s announcement that Smarttech247 had won a multi-year contract for managed cyber security services by a global advanced manufacturing company, employing over 100,000 staff and a leading member of the Fortune Global-1000.
On the Aquis market there was progress reported from Australia focused green mining group NQ Minerals (NQM) where it said it was well advanced with financial institutions with regard to refinancing negotiations. Here we have seen the company successfully restructure its Hellyer debt with a $55 million package in December last year. NQ said it is set to follow on from this to restructure its debts with the intent to position itself as a leading company in its sector with a balance sheet and financing capabilities equivalent to that of its peer group.
Biotechnology company Okyo Pharma (OKYO) said that it has retained the services of Ora Inc., an ophthalmology contract research organization, to guide the company's upcoming product development and lead the regulatory strategy of OK-101 for the treatment of dry eye. OK-101, OKYO's lead pre-clinical compound is a novel long-acting GPCR-based anti-inflammatory drug candidate. Independent oil and gas production company focused on Nigeria, San Leon Energy (SLE), announced its audited final results for the year ended 31 December 2020. Highlights here over the period have included the return of approximately $33.8 million to shareholders during the first half of 2020. In April last year San Leon amended the existing Loan Notes Instrument with Midwestern Leon Petroleum Limited with the result that $40.0 million was received immediately by San Leon. Last week San Leon said it was in preliminary discussions with Midwestern about acquiring Midwestern's indirect interest in the OML 18 oil and gas block located onshore in Nigeria. Going forward San Leon is looking forward to the commissioning of the ELI pipeline and closing out the Oza transaction.
It continues to be an active period for specialist graphite producer and graphene developer Tirupati Graphite (TGR). The latest here has been an update on activities at its primary graphite mining and processing operations at the Sahamamy and Vatomina projects in Madagascar. Overall the company said that it is focused on increasing capacity to 84,000 tpa by 2024 at its two projects. At Sahamamy it has commenced area grading and work for the second 18,000 tpa module to take capacity to 21,000 tpa in Q1 2022. At Vatomina Tirupati is on track to commission upscaled 9,000 tpa operations over the next three weeks. The company has also progressed construction activities for the 100Kw hydro power plant and is advancing plans for an additional c.900Kw hydropower capacity. Shishir Poddar, CEO of Tirupati Graphite said that, “Having historically established a >50% operating margin with a c.US$835/- basket price realisation from the current 3,000 tpa capacity operation in Sahamamy, we believe that the enhanced capacity will go a long way towards reaching our goal of being profitable at the corporate level.”