Chapel Down Group plc, a publicly traded company [EPIC:CDGP], has updated their new share subscription to reflect the success of their equity crowdfunding offer on Seedrs. In a public filing Chapel Down stated they had raised an additional £0.57 million via the subscription of 2,035,714 ordinary shares. This increase was correlated to the total raised as of midday (GMT) September 22nd at £3.6 million. Chapel Down contrasted this amount to the £1.7 million initial target, a sum that has been easily bested. The offer on Seedrs indicates a funded amount of £3,889,535 for 13.91% equity in the company. To date 1287 investors have participated in the offer, a significant jump from just over 10 days ago when 934 investors had purchased shares. This is the largest number of investors to have participated in an offer on the Seedrs platform.
This is the first publicly traded company to raise capital through equity crowdfunding. The new shares will be issued under the board’s existing authorities. Application will be made for the new shares to be admitted to ISDX and it is anticipated that this will occur on 26 September 2014. The new ordinary shares being issued in respect of the crowdfunding, will be issued on the earlier of the maximum (€4,999,99.99) being reached or 14 November 2014. The amounts raised to date includes a subscription by both John Dunsmore (Chairman) and Nigel Wray (Non-Executive Director). Henderson Global Investors, has bought a further 357,142 New Shares which takes their holding to 15,213,563 Ordinary Shares, representing 16.54% of the issued share capital following admission of the 5,998,212 New Shares issued under the placing and subscription.
Chapel Down has previously announced the additional capital will be utilized to plant more vines, build a new winery & brewery and expand existing facilities. The UK based Chapel Down is a leading wine and craft beer producer located in Kent managed by Frazer Thompson. The company has garnered support from well known chefs such as Gordon Ramsey and Jamie Oliver. The 13 year old company is already profitable and the offer was designed to leverage consumer affinity to generate needed capital. The offer also included perks for investors such as discounts on wine purchases.
Seedrs has previously described this offer as a “coming of age” moment in the new realm of investment crowdfunding. While there have been no announcements of future offers from public traded companies, expectations are for future public listings to occur as companies seek to leverage the efficient approach of offering shares online.
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