Winchester: Imaginatik floats on AIM
Finance South East, a not-for-profit finance and investment support organisation, has reported the recent flotation of Imaginatik on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange.
Imaginatik, a leading provider of innovation software and services, raised £1.5 million net of expenses via a placing at 7.5p per share. The company’s first day of dealing was December 15, 2006 and market capitalisation at the placing price was £8.7 million.
Imaginatik was founded in 2000 by Mark Turrell (CEO) and Yvonnne Lindow (VP of Operations) and has operations in the US, UK and Germany. The capital raised by the flotation is to fund a number of areas including additional sales executives, marketing resources and implementation staff in both the US and UK. This will allow the company to take advantage of the rapidly expanding market for its products.
The company’s core product is “Idea Central”, a software package that helps businesses innovate in a systematic way right across their organisations. The software is multi-lingual and can be applied to business operations in a variety of industries. In addition it is configurable, can be deployed quickly and is designed to ensure customer modifications are kept to a minimum. The company’s clients include Pfizer Inc, Hewlett-Packard and Chevron Texaco Global Lubricants. Imaginatik’s revenue was £1.4 million to the year end 31st March 2006 and in the following six months, to the end of September 2006, sales had reached £1.3 million, a 200% increase year on year.
The success of Imaginatik was part funded by Finance South East’s Accelerator Fund. This fund can provide loans of up to £100,000 to high growth companies in the South East and is part funded by the Bank of Scotland and the DTi through its Early Growth Funds Initiative. Imaginatik is the third public flotation of a company through this particular funding initiative.
Imaginatik approached Finance South East through their Business Link advisor.
Mark Turrell, CEO and founder of Imaginatik, commented: “The Accelerator Fund loan gave us some flexibility in the business and helped us to continue sales growth. The fund managers at Finance South East were supportive and ensured we had the funds promptly. After the success of the floatation on AIM, we feel that Imaginatik is in a very good position to capitalise on the excellent long-term growth expected in this market”
Sally Goodsell, chief executive at Finance South East, added: “Imaginatik’s flotation is great news and a real plus for the Accelerator Fund. Banks are often risk averse particularly if there are no assets as security. Our Accelerator Fund bridges this funding gap and we’ve helped 50 companies by lending in excess of £4m in less than two years.”
