Business

Cathal Friel’s green transition firm shares rise in London debut

IPO is fifth put together by Irish serial entrepreneur Cathal Friel in past dozen years

Cathal Friel, co-founder of European Green Transition, which floated in London on Monday.

Joe Brennan
Mon Apr 8 2024 - 09:52

Shares in European Green Transition (EGT), a company cofounded by serial entrepreneur Cathal Friel focused on assets and businesses needed for the green energy transition, rose in early trading after floating on London’s junior market.

The company’s stock was up 6.3 per cent a little over an hour after the session got under way, giving it a market value of €15.4 million (€16.9 million). The aim is to have follow-on stock placings as the company develops and finds more investments.

The seed portfolio includes three exploration projects – two in Sweden and one in Germany – for critical metals such as lithium, used for electric vehicle batteries, and rare-earth metals such as dysprosium and terbium, used in the manufacturing of wind turbines.

The company, which raised a total of £6.46 million in the initial public offering of shares at 10 pence each, said it will also target “distressed and undervalued green economy assets in Europe”.

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The principal current asset is the so-called Olserum REE (rare-earth elements) project in southern Sweden, which EGT aims to progress towards obtaining a 25-year exploitation permit. EGT does not intend to mine itself, but bring in a partner and benefit from royalties.

“Today’s listing and fundraise is a crucial milestone for EGT. The funds raised will contribute to our existing green economy projects which are intended to support the energy transition across Europe, notably the Olserum Rare Earth project in Sweden,” said EGT’s chief executive Aidan Lavelle.

It would mark the fifth IPO that Mr Friel’s Raglan Capital corporate finance business has put together in the space of a dozen years.

Mr Friel’s stake has been diluted to about 19 per cent from almost 44 per cent as a result of the fundraising, still leaving him as the largest shareholder.

Fastnet Oil & Gas was floated in 2012 to focus on exploration. It subsequently spun off its oil and gas assets before merging with Amryt Pharma, which was looking to buy and develop a pipeline of drug candidates focused on treating rare and orphan diseases. That deal was essentially an IPO as it involved a €12.6 million stock offering.

Amryt was acquired for about $1.48 billion (€1.37 billion) last year by Chiesi Farmaceutici, an Italian pharmaceutical company.

Mr Friel orchestrated the IPO of Open Orphan, a pharma services company, in 2019 through the reverse takeover of Dublin-listed Venn Life Sciences. The company went on later that year to buy UK clinical trials business Hvivo, which was struggling at the time. The since-renamed Hvivo group has market value of a little over £200 million.

Hvivo spun out its Poolbeg Pharma unit, which is focused on developing treatments for infectious diseases, in 2021 through an IPO in London of the division. Poolbeg’s market capitalisation stands at £50 million

Joe Brennan

Joe Brennan

Joe Brennan is Markets Correspondent of The Irish Times

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