Braveheart Investment Group (BRH ) has raised £2.5m in a placing that is said will enable the group to accelerate the development of its subsidiary, Paraytec's, Covid testing instrument.
The London-listed firm has raised £2.5m before expenses in a placing of 13,888,889 new ordinary shares at a price of 18p a share, a 20% discount to its closing price on Thursday.
Braveheart’s CEO, Trevor Brown, subscribed for 3,500,000 placing shares while Free Association Books, a firm which is connected to Brown, subscribed for 4,500,000 shares.
The proceeds will enable it to accelerate the development of the COVID-19 test by taking direct control of the final design and engineering packages. At the same time, Paraytec will continue to seek out partners for licensing and development as well as a potential sale.
Braveheart said it believes this strategy should enable its subsidiary, Paraytec, to deliver a finished product to market directly if it fails to find a satisfactory deal with a third party.
Commenting on this morning’s placing, Brown told investors: "We are delighted to have been able to raise this extra funding which will enable Paraytec to pursue its new strategy."
The firm said an application has been made to the London Stock Exchange for the Placing Shares to be admitted to trading on AIM. It is expected that Admission will become effective and that dealings in the Placing Shares on AIM will commence on or around 19 August 2021.
Shares in Braveheart Investment Group were trading 7.69% higher this morning at 24.5p
Back in June 2021, Braveheart released positive data from a clinical analysis of Paraytec’s COVID-19 test which involved over analysing 120 patient nasopharyngeal swab samples.
In the lab, the Paraytec test was shown to achieve 94% sensitivity and 100% specificity.
A key advantage of the test was its potential to distinguish between intact viral particles and residual RNA fragments. RNA fragments are present in nasal and pharyngeal epithelial cells and can yield a positive PCR test result for several weeks after peak viral load has passed.
Earlier this month, the Company noted that Paraytec's work to develop an instrument for the detection of COVID-19 was ‘progressing as planned; and that a corporate finance specialist had been engaged to market the technology to potential partners or acquirers.
At the time, the firm said it anticipated releasing a further update for the COVID-19 test, as well as for itss Alzheimer's disease (AD) scanner projects at the end of September 2021.
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