The 3rd of March will be written in big, bold letters for St Helen's Capital as the company opens an entirely new chapter in its history following its switch to AIM from PLUS.An institutional stockbroker and corporate finance adviser to smaller companies said it hopes the listing will get much-need cash injection and will raise its profile on institutional markets.
The company currently provides its brokerage services to 12 AIM quoted companies and 34 on PLUS.
Results for the six months ended 30 September 2007 showed pre-tax profits of £1.13m on turnover of £2.3m. Cash reserves as at 22 February 2008 were approximately £2m.
"With increased visibility and improved liquidity, our transition from PLUS to AIM marks an important step in our strategy to further strengthen our presence in the small cap arena and attract high-quality individuals to the team," said boss Ruari McGirr.
Initial public offerings on AIM went down by up to 50% last year as the the credit crunch hit the markets globally. The accountancy firm Baker Tilly, which last week released its findings from a survey of the AIM market, used football parlance when it called 2007 a "year of two halves"
It said: "As the year opened, AIM fared strongly, with more companies trading on it than the main market. In the second half of the year, however, AIM suffered from the macro forces that led to the 'credit crunch', which in turn affected most major economies and markets."
Overall, the value of IPOs fell to £6.6bn last year, down on 2006, while the number of companies attracted to the market slowed. More than half of the companies which were questioned admitted the market's performance was behind expectations.
St Helen's Capital is the leading adviser on Plus, but since two senior arrivals from the broker Daniel Stewart last year the company has changed its focus to concentrate on AIM broking. Rauri McGirr took over as chief executive and Seb Wykham joined as executive director in February 2007 and have set about overhauling the structure, including raising money to recapitalise the business.
The switch to AIM is seen as the next step higher in the company's development. The management said its decision to move was taken to "raise its profile within the target corporate and institutional markets". Mr McGirr said the move was "important in our strategy to further strengthen our presence in a small-cap arena and attract high-quality individuals to the team". He added as it increasingly looked to raise money for companies on AIM the group felt it should trade on the London Stock Exchange's junior market itself.
Reference
www.sthelenscapital.com
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