Harwood Wealth Management is looking to raise £10m to fund new acquisitions.
The Aim-listed financial planning firm will do so by issuing new shares priced at £1.50 each.
If there is sufficient demand, Neil Dunkley, the company’s joint chief executive has agreed to sell some of his own shares along with those of his wife Sian and Mark Howard, the company’s chief commercial officer.
Together they would sell up to 1.33m shares, raising an extra £2m.
In a statement to the stock exchange this morning, Harwood said: “As outlined in the company's admission document issued at the time of its IPO in March 2016, the company is pursuing a growth strategy which entails acquisitive as well as organic growth, capitalising on the market consolidation driven by the regulatory change characteristics of its industry sector in recent years.”
Harwood completed 17 acquisitions in 2016 for a total consideration of £11.6m.
Its assets under influence increased 75 per cent in that time from £1.21bn to £2.06bn, with assets under management growing from £276m to £693m.
The statement added that Harwood has signed initial agreements for a further six acquisitions, at an aggregate estimated consideration of around £3.1m which would add an estimated £156m of assets under administration.
In addition the current acquisition pipeline, where proposals or draft initial agreements have been issued to vendors, includes another nine acquisitions, which would add an additional £960m of AUA for an aggregate consideration of £14.95m.
When Harwood started trading on the Aim market in March 2016, it was valued at £45m.
As of this morning it has a market cap of £121m and its shares are valued at £2.17, an increase of 136 per cent over the course of the year.
In its most recent results, published in January, Harwood saw its profits decrease from £1.15m to £371,000 during 2016 which it attributed to the cost of floating on the stock exchange.
damian.fantato@ft.com
