Arria warns on funding ahead of switch

SHARES in Arria NLG dived 40 per cent yesterday after the group revealed its ability to continue trading may be dependent on the result of fundraising carried out as part of its move to the New Zealand Stock Exchange.

Arria NLG was spun out of Aberdeen University to commercialise technology known as natural language generation, which trawls data and translates it into spoken English and generates easily readable reports.

In October, the company announced plans to move its primary listing to New Zealand with a secondary listing in Australia.

This will lead to the cancellation of its shares on London’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM).

An initial public offering (IPO) for the New Zealand listing will take place in March via a new holding company, Arria NZ.

Ahead of the new listings the company is planning a pre-subscription offer of convertible loan note in return for a minimum investment of $500,000. If successful, this will raise £14 million. But Arria warned that if the offer was not successful, it would need to seek additional funding.

The company told the stock market: “If the IPO pre-subscription offer fails to raise sufficient amounts or the IPO pre-subscription resolutions are not approved at the general meeting, and no alternative funding can be raised, Arria UK’s ability to operate as a going concern may be put at risk during the first quarter of 2017.”

The company has invested £35m over the last four years to establish a market position. In this time it has been awarded nine patents and has partnered with a number of global firms.