New Issues Examined by Ben Jaglom

For the month of September, a piddling £27.5 million was raised, standing against the figure of £128.7 million raised a year earlier. Including secondary issues, a total of £220.8 million was raised in the month (2010: £281.8 million). As a result, for the year to September, the total raised on AIM stands at £3.5 billion, a decline of £258 million on the previous year.

Amid this gloomy environment comedy brand Jongleurs is looking to invigorate the junior market. The chain of comedy clubs, founded by entrepreneur Maria Kempinska, has grown to become one of the UK’s best-known comedy organisations, operating in towns such as Nottingham and Birmingham as well as the capital.

I recently spoke to Kempinska and her business partner, John Davy, who are looking to raise £1.5 million in 12 to 18 months through their broker, Webb Capital. Davy argues that an AIM listing will take the company ‘to a far larger platform involving media and management’, adding that the junior market will help a brand that ‘already has a large consumer following’. In fact, Davy remarks that Jongleurs has had ‘many offers from our fan base to be involved in investing in Jongleurs’.

He maintains that, at a time when the nightclub business is trapped in a ‘spiral of ever-decreasing margins’, Jongleurs’ nights stand at the ‘top of the tree’, with tickets ranging in price from £15 to £40 and with an average customer spend of £15. He opines that the comedy nights provide the venues with what he says are ‘high-spending customer who will help to improve their margins’.

Building the business
The duo want to create seven new clubs over the next three years and increase their franchise network from 19 to 30. In addition, the plan is to develop a business that will be able to supply a large roster of comedians to events at hotels and corporate events while also building its DVD range and creating what it describes as a ‘talent management division’ to foster comedians’ careers.

Kempinska insists that there are ‘more people interested in comedy than ever before, and numerous comedians who are as good as Michael McIntyre and Lee Evans who have never received the same sort of recognition’.

The team is also keen to expand its online presence. Kempinska notes that its subscriber base stands at 250,000, with the ambition to get to two million subscribers. The company boasts that it wants to create a ‘strong internet platform, which delivers product and increases consumer awareness of Jongleurs throughout the world’.

Jongleurs is the sort of company that has not debuted on AIM for a long time, comparable in its unconventional nature to Music Festivals, the AIM newcomer I wrote about in April. Time will tell if the company stays the course and joins the junior market come 18 months’ time.

It certainly makes a welcome change from the traditional mining and resource-focused businesses attracted to AIM.

Sphere still going
A company that provides fewer puns is Sphere Medical Holding, a Cambridge-based medical device manufacturer looking to raise £15 million through broker Peel Hunt before joining AIM by the end of November. The group, led by chief executive officer Dr Stuart Hendry, is developing a range of monitoring products of which its key offering is Proxima, which carries out ‘real-time’ monitoring of a patient’s arterial blood flow.

The group notes that it intends to use the proceeds to develop its manufacturing capacity, increasing its marketing activities and provide working capital, as it ‘transitions from research and development’ to what it says will be a ‘more commercially focused group’.  

In a year of limited activity, £15 million is a considerable sum for an IPO, but the venture joins a medical sector that has long struggled to enthuse investors.