SPECIAL EFFECTS FIRM SHELVES £600M FLOAT
AN Oscar-winning visual effects company known for its work on Hollywood films Blade Runner 2049, Inception and Sky Atlantic TV series Chernobyl has pulled its planned listing on the London Stock Exchange.
DNEG said last month it was looking to raise £150m from a float on the LSE’s Main Market. This valued the firm at more than £600m.
But yesterday it said it has decided to postpone the listing due to ‘ongoing market uncertainty’. The London-based group added that it had received ‘a strong level of interest from investors’ and still intends to go public once market conditions improve.
A number of firms have cancelled floats this year, including Kazakh finance firm Kaspi Bank in October and Swiss Re’s British life insurer ReAssure in July. Although listings worldwide have slowed, in the UK uncertainty around Brexit has also been blamed. DNEG was hoping to use money raised from the float to pay down its debts and to cash in on the number of limited special effects providers capable of offering the scale and expertise needed on big-budget films and TV shows. It has won Baftas for its work on Interstellar and Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 2, and an Oscar for moon-landing movie First Man.
DNEG was founded in 1995 in India and is part of Indian entrepreneur Namit Malhotra’s media services empire Prime Focus. The company merged with London-founded Double Negative in 2014.
In the year to March 31 it raked in revenues of £246m and made profits of £55.3m.