Old Woking, Surrey-based Alphameric Plc accompanied still improving first half figures on Friday with a cash call to shareholders – it has done a provisional placing and is making an open offer – to raise UKP885,000 net of expenses in new money and to fund the purchase of the remainder of AlphaServ Ltd. Alphameric will pay UKP2.75m for the acquisition, to be met by the issue of new ordinary shares. In addition to the shares issued to fund the acquisition there will be a cash placing of 3.56m new ordinary shares to raise the new money for expansion and additional working capital. The total number of shares being placed is 6.2m, at 37.5p per share. The open offer to shareholders is three new shares for every 13 held. In further financial engineering, the company is proposing that Seijin Electron Inc, a South Korean keyboards maker, should subscribe for 3m new shares in Alphameric, and Alphameric will also ask shareholders to approve conversion of the 500,000 9.75% cumulative convertible redeemable preference shares that are held by 3i Plc into 1.2m new ordinary shares. On the trading front, profits were up 70% and turnover rose 19%. The company signed contracts for the first 500 of its new Viewpoint multimedia for business systems and has a contract to install and maintain a two-way very small aperture terminal satellite network for the National Lottery. The order book is up.
