Mail is being delivered thick and fast to the Investors Chronicle this holiday season. It's not all Christmas cards and chocolates from our loyal readers, though. Instead, there is an abundance of heavy prospectuses from technology companies looking to list their shares in London.
In December alone, five new technology companies have completed initial public offerings on the alternative investment market (Aim) or the main market. The biggest IPO of the bunch - indeed, the largest British technology IPO in the past three years - was Servelec (SERV), a provider of software and services to the healthcare and energy industries. It raised £122m but did not receive any of the proceeds; instead, all of the money went to CSE Global, a Singapore company that acquired Servelec in 2000 and effectively sold all of its holdings.
Arria NLG (NLG), a spin-out from the University of Aberdeen, similarly didn't raise a penny but saw its share price climb nearly fourfold in its first two days of trading. The share price has since fallen back to earth, but still trades 40 per cent above the IPO price. Arria uses proprietary 'natural language generation' software to write easy-to-read reports based on huge amounts of live data; the technology is currently being used on offshore oil rigs and for weather reporting.
Chinese firm JQW (JQW) raised £6.7m on 9 December, giving it a market capitalisation at admission of £135m. It will use the money to further promote and develop its core business, which is an online business-to-business (B2B) platform that connects small- and medium-sized Chinese companies with potential trade partners.
At the smaller end of the market, SyQic (SYQ), an Asia-focused provider of online video content to mobiles and tablets, raised £3.2m on Aim to give it a market capitalisation of £17m. CityFibre expects to list its shares before Christmas and is looking to raise £25m to expand its fibre optic broadband network to Tier 2 cities around the UK, giving it a market capitalisation around £50m.
