Lancashire energy consultancy snaps up company amid £35m shares fund-raising drive

The move comes as the Kirkham based firm has announced it is to raise £35m with a shares package.

The offer raised £10.7m through a firm placing of 71,396,800 new ordinary shares and has conditionally raised £19.3m through a conditional placing of 128,603,200 new Ordinary Shares, both at 15 pence per placing share, within hours of it going live.

The firm is looking to grow and take more of a share of the estimated £ 17.7bn UK energy market. The Ignite deal could rise with a further consideration of up to £19m in cash and shares, subject to meeting performance criteria in Ignite’s financial performance to 2023.

The fundraising package consists of a proposed placing of new ordinary shares to raise up to £30m by way of an accelerated bookbuilding process.

And to enable other shareholders to participate in the proposed issue of new ordinary shares, the Company is to raise up to an additional £5m by way of an open offer made to qualifying shareholders.

Mark Dickinson, chief executive officer of Inspired Energy, said: “We are delighted to have received strong levels of support in our fundraise from new and existing investors.

"I am delighted we have reached agreement to acquire the outstanding 60 per cent. of Ignite, which represents an important milestone in our strategic focus of accelerating the growth of our optimisation services offering.

"We are pleased with the progress made to date in identifying cross-selling opportunities and look forward to maximising the commercial overlap between the optimisation and assurance services’ markets.

“This fundraising will secure the Company’s ability to respond quickly to, and execute, other acquisition opportunities which we believe are likely to emerge over the coming months and would add incremental capability to our growing platform.

“A key area of focus for Inspired continues to be its development of ESG solutions, where we provide assurance on buying strategies for customer and support them to reduce consumption and improve efficiency with the ultimate aim of delivering net zero carbon.

"Ignite, together with other M&A targets, will expand our service offering to customers.”