New Investments

RNS Number : 5705P

Primorus Investments PLC

01 September 2017

 

Primorus Investments plc

("Primorus" or the "Company")

New Investments

Primorus Investments plc (AIM: PRIM, NEX: PRIM) announces that it has made three new investments, as detailed below:

Engage

Primorus has invested, by way of subscription, £400,000 in Engage Technology Partners Limited ("Engage") on a pre-new money valuation of £15m as part of a fully subscribed £5.25m funding round.  Founded in 2013, Engage builds software to assist with finding, hiring, compliance and paying of the rapidly growing contingent workforce in the UK.  Their platform supports the entire workflow, and simultaneously services employers, recruitment agencies, payroll companies, accountants and workers. Having everyone in the supply chain sharing the same platform makes a difficult, expensive, and error-prone process simple and more cost effective.

At present the recruitment industry is fragmented by dozens of software suppliers providing only part of the functionality required, to one customer at a time. This generates duplication of effort, administration errors and fraud as data is re-keyed and passed manually between parties.  Engage's solution to this is a SaaS platform hosted on Amazon Web Services, available securely via the Cloud on any internet device, by the whole market, simultaneously. 

Engage is sold via a referral and viral sales model and does not have a marketing budget as part of its business model. Its directors believe it is already challenging the large enterprise-based incumbents via a low-cost SaaS model of charging £1.99 per worker per week.

Engage has rapidly gone from a minimally viable product to a fully saleable and scalable SaaS platform which has built up an impressive and rapidly growing customer base including many household names. The current funding round is largely being deployed to allow for more product automation in roll-out to customers with a view to providing a fully automated process by January 2018.

An AIM IPO is planned to take place in 2018.  In the year ended 31 May 2017, Engage incurred a loss of £1.71m and intends to break even in the current financial year.

FOMO Money

Primorus has invested, by way of subscription, A$400,000 (approximately £240,000) in FOMO Money Pty Ltd ("FOMO Money") on a pre-new money valuation of circa A$6m.  FOMO Money is a new entrant into the Australian Fintech sector based in Melbourne which has been in development for the past 18 months. FOMO Money is an online lending business which will offer personal loans and, in time, brokered home loans that will target the millennial market. 

FOMO Money plans to commence lending in 2018 through a number of distribution arrangements with education providers offering courses to students in Australia (i.e. student loans). The business will also offer personal loans direct to consumers through its online lending platform to validate the forward looking scorecard of loan criteria it has built and the customer acquisition tool it has licensed in Australia.

As a new corporate entity, FOMO Money does not have any historic financial information. 

WeShop

Primorus has invested, by way of subscription, £200,000 in WeShop Limited ("WeShop") on a pre-new money valuation of £25m.  WeShop is a new way to shop online and earn rewards. Users can browse millions of products from many top brands, discover which have been recommended by people known to them and earn rewards to withdraw as cash or donate to charity.  WeShop allows the user to shop with friends to share ideas and gain inspiration, with everyone earning rewards.

An AIM IPO is planned to take place during 2018.  In the year ended 31 May 2016, WeShop incurred a loss of £2,434,597.

Following the investments noted above, the Company will have available cash resources of approximately £510,000.

Alastair Clayton, Executive Director, commented:

"We are really pleased to be able to announce our participation in the above investments as per our mandate.

The Board see truly scalable SaaS as an outstanding opportunity for really rapid changes in the profitability landscape for many existing industries. The speed and scale of change is in some cases breath-taking and we are already seeing the commercial outcomes of this in the form of Engage Technology. We believe that Engage is already demonstrating that, through the willingness of major international corporates to now securely share data across the Cloud, entire sectors, in this case HR/Payroll, can be fundamentally changed.

In a similarly revolutionary vein FOMO Money aims to use a proprietary, forward-looking algorithm to allow non-traditional lending to future high-earners in the form of university undergraduates.

Totally underserved and based on an archaic backward-looking credit model, FOMO Money intends to shake up the status quo for the millennial credit market. It is already in advanced negotiations with several parties regarding the provision of senior debt to fully launch its product in 2018. FOMO Money is also on the cusp of some further Board appointments from senior levels of Australian banking.

WeShop is an online retailer in a crowded space but has several features around rewards, loyalty and ethics that make it a potential standout.  Chaired by Richard Hammond, Managing Director and Chief Financial Officer of Mail.Ru Group Limited and the current Group Strategist for Metalloinvest,  the Board also boasts Baroness Mone of Mayfair OBE, founder of the Ultimo lingerie and internationally renowned business woman and philanthropist, we believe WeShop has an outstanding Board and senior management team and we expect it to list on AIM in 2018."

This announcement contains inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of EU Regulation 596/2014.

For further information, please contact:

Primorus Investments plc:	[phone]
Alastair Clayton
Nominated Adviser:	[phone]
Cairn Financial Advisers LLP
James Caithie / Sandy Jamieson
Broker:	[phone]
Optiva Securities Limited
Christian Dennis / Jeremy King

 

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