European Green Transition (EGT) listed on Aim this morning, following a placing, subscription and retail offer of shares at 10p each. The total amount raised was £6.46m.
The company was co-founded by serial entrepreneur Cathal Friel, who led the teams behind Cove Energy, Amryt Pharma and hVIVO.
This time round, the focus is on green energy and the ongoing transition towards environmentally friendly energy assets and away from fossil fuels.
To that end, European Green Transition, or EGT for short, will focus on all aspects of the green energy and commodity cycle, starting with the battery metals, and ending with recycling.
The flagship asset at the moment is the Olserum rare earths project in Sweden, which is likely to generate considerable newsflow in the weeks and months ahead, now that the funding is in and the team can get to work on the ground.
"Today's listing and fundraise is a crucial milestone for EGT,” said chief executive Aiden Lavelle.
“The funds raised will contribute to our existing green economy projects which are intended to support the energy transition across Europe, notably the Olserum rare earth project in Sweden. Additionally, the fundraise will strengthen the Company's position to acquire what we believe are distressed and undervalued green economy assets in Europe.”
The initial market capitalisation of the company on listing was £14.5m.
View from VOX
After a long hiatus, it looks like the IPO market on Aim is about to come alive again.
EGT is only the first of a couple of listings that are due, and what’s significant is that the funds involved aren’t trivial - £6.46m is a solid endowment to present to a company at the beginning of its listed life, and should set it up nicely for some time to come.
It’ll be interesting now to see what kind of deals EGT cuts, whether it is simply a mining company with a fashionable name, or whether it really will blaze a trail in the green energy transition. Certainly, the market is crying out for such a proposition and for it to be meaningful rather than token.
Chief executive Aiden Lavelle apparently already has one or two deals in his sights, and he refers to some of the potential assets that he’s looking at as “distressed”. There are plenty of distressed assets across lots of sectors at the moment, so there’s every reason to be optimistic that some kind of deal can be done early. At that point we’ll get our first real signpost as to European Green Transition’s future direction.