Are the green shoots starting to emerge for the junior market? Well, it certainly seems to be the case with a rash of fundraisers.
Okay, most have been decidedly modest investment rounds, but they underline a willingness of investors to start backing London’s smaller fry. In other words, the brakes may be coming off.
Faron Pharma was the biggest beneficiary as it bagged £10million this week.
Joining the score of firms having secured fresh capital so far in 2025, Faron on Thursday cleared a strongly oversubscribed equity raise to advance its experimental cancer immunotherapy.
Indeed, strong demand left it fetching €12million, against the €10million originally sought, to support its BEXMAB Phase II trial and send shares higher at the back end of the week.
That was not all though, with RC Fornax on Wednesday attracting £6.15million in the junior market’s first initial public offering of the year.
A strong start to February comes after some £94million was raised in January, admittedly after an unexpectedly active December, but nevertheless offering tentative signs of green shoots.
‘January is rarely a lively month,’ AJ Bell analyst Russ Mould pointed out, ‘the activity is potentially a good sign’.
Allenby Capital analysts added: ‘December 2024 was the most active month with £463million raised for a diverse range of companies from mining to pharmaceuticals, hopefully setting the tone for 2025.’
Helix Exploration was among these, bagging £5million (more on this later), while Quadrise, also in late January, raised £6.53million to help commercialise cleaner fuel products MSAR and BioMSAR, before sodium-reduction innovator MicroSalt banked £2.3million to scale B2B sales to snack manufacturers.
Quantum Blockchain Technologies, Mkango Resources and Oxford BioDynamics also deserve honourable mentions, having pulled in £2million, £2.3million and £7.4million respectively.
Though too soon to call it a recovery or a renaissance, investor appetite to get out the chequebooks comes despite a big week for political and socio-economic headlines.
Having avoided a wider beating on jitters around Donald Trump’s tariffs, the FTSE 100 notched up yet another record after Thursday’s Bank of England interest rate cut.
London’s blue chips approached the weekend 0.4 per cent higher at 8,710 as a result, while the FTSE 250 succumbed to macroeconomic fears to drop 0.1 per cent to 20,930.
Junior stocks followed their blue-chip counterparts in gaining, with the AIM all-share ticking up 0.2 per cent to 720.
Among the AIM winners, Orosur Mining skyrocketed 70 per cent for the week after an update on operations in Columbia showed assay results of up to 6.22 grams per tonne of gold.
Xeros Technology Holdings Group was another, adding 47 per cent on a major breakthrough in commercialising its eco-friendly washing technology.
A letter of intent had been signed with a leading electronics distributor for its XF3 microfibre filter, it said, paving the way for sales in major retail outlets from late 2025.
News of record cash flow and expectation-beating profit in 2024 sent Staffline 23 per cent higher.
Revenue had climbed 12.8 per cent to £1.06billion on strong recruitment services demand, Tuesday results showed, with profit up 9 per cent to £88.1million and net cash at £9.7million.
Ilika marked another bright spot, surging 26 per cent after signalling a major step towards commercialising its Goliath battery.
Working with the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre (UKBIC), Ilika said Wednesday it had successfully demonstrated that key manufacturing steps could be scaled using existing gigafactory equipment.
And finally, Helix Exploration was another to deal positive news, having been a rare small-cap success story over the past year, with its stock up 35 per cent since April’s flotation.
Despite this strong performance, the share price in recent weeks appears to have been placed in a holding pattern.
Now, this is odd as we are heading into a period of positive news flow from the US-focused helium producer.
The company recently secured £5million in fresh investment to fully develop its Rudyard Project in Montana – an asset valued at nearly three times Helix’s current market capitalisation.
Adding to the excitement, the company is about to carry out rapid testing at the Clink-1 well, also in Montana, which could further boost its prospects.
For those new to the story, Helix is tapping into a high-demand gas in a region where supply is abundant and infrastructure is well established.
At 14.83p, the stock is definitely one to watch.
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