THIS ANNOUNCEMENT (INCLUDING THE APPENDIX) ("ANNOUNCEMENT") AND THE INFORMATION CONTAINED HEREIN IS RESTRICTED AND IS NOT FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION, IN WHOLE OR IN PART, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, IN, INTO OR FROM THE UNITED STATES, AUSTRALIA, CANADA, THE REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA, JAPAN, THE REPUBLIC OF IRELAND OR ANY OTHER JURISDICTION IN WHICH SUCH RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION WOULD BE UNLAWFUL. PLEASE SEE THE IMPORTANT NOTICES AT THE END OF THIS ANNOUNCEMENT.

THIS ANNOUNCEMENT CONTAINS INSIDE INFORMATION FOR THE PURPOSES OF ARTICLE 7 OF EU REGULATION 596/2014 (WHICH FORMS PART OF DOMESTIC UK LAW PURSUANT TO THE EUROPEAN UNION (WITHDRAWAL) ACT 2018) ("UK MAR")). IN ADDITION, MARKET SOUNDINGS (AS DEFINED IN UK MAR) WERE TAKEN IN RESPECT OF THE PLACING WITH THE RESULT THAT CERTAIN PERSONS BECAME AWARE OF INSIDE INFORMATION (AS DEFINED IN UK MAR), AS PERMITTED BY UK MAR. THIS INSIDE INFORMATION IS SET OUT IN THIS ANNOUNCEMENT. THEREFORE, THOSE PERSONS THAT RECEIVED INSIDE INFORMATION IN A MARKET SOUNDING ARE NO LONGER IN POSSESSION OF SUCH INSIDE INFORMATION RELATING TO THE COMPANY AND ITS SECURITIES.

Actual Experience plc

(the "Company" or "Actual" or "Actual Experience")

Proposed Conditional Placing and Subscription to raise £3.0 million

Broker Option to raise up to £0.5 million

Cancellation and Grant of Options, Board Changes, Proposed Appointment of a Non-Executive

Director and Appointment of Joint Broker

Notice of General Meeting

Actual Experience plc (AIM: ACT), the analytics-as-a-service company, today announces a conditional placing (the "Placing"), proposed subscription (the "Subscription") and conditional broker option (the "Broker Option") raising total gross proceeds of up to £3.5 million (together the "Fundraising") at a price of 2 pence per share (the "Placing Price").

The Board of Actual Experience also announces that Chief Executive Officer ("CEO"), Dave Page, has stepped down from his position and as a Director of the Company. Effective immediately, Steve Bennetts becomes interim CEO in addition to his role as Chief Financial Officer and Kirsten English, Non-Executive Chair, becomes Executive Chair. The Board will commence the search for a new CEO in a process involving external candidates plus a strong internal candidate with the view to having the new CEO appointed by 1 January 2023.

It is also intended that Harmesh Suniara, Portfolio Manager at Lombard Odier, will join the Board as a Non-executive Director immediately upon Admission.

The Company also announces that, subject to obtaining the agreement of affected option holders, it intends to cancel approximately 819,000 employee share options currently in issue and re-issue new options to employees and Directors.

The Company is pleased to announce, conditional upon Admission, the appointment of Turner Pope Investments (TPI) Limited ("Turner Pope") as joint broker to the Company alongside Singer Capital Markets.

Fundraising Highlights

  • Placing with certain institutional and other investors to raise gross proceeds of £2.825 million through the issue of 141,250,000 new ordinary shares of 0.2 pence each in the Company ("Ordinary Shares") (the "Placing Shares") at the Placing Price.
  • Proposed Subscription with certain Directors and management of the Company to raise gross proceeds of £0.175 million through the issue of 8,750,000 new Ordinary Shares (the "Subscription Shares") at the Placing Price.
  • To provide existing Shareholders and other investors who did not have the opportunity to participate in the Placing the chance to participate in the Fundraising, the Company has granted the Broker Option to Turner Pope, to invite subscriptions for up to 25,000,000 new Ordinary Shares (the "Broker Option Shares") (in addition to the Placing Shares and the Subscription Shares) at the Placing Price. The Broker Option is exercisable any time before 11.00 a.m. on 23 September 2022. As far as is practical, if the Broker Option is over-subscribed, participation in the Broker Option will be prioritised for existing Shareholders (direct or indirect) on the register at the close of business on 16 September 2022. If the Broker Option is fully taken up, it will raise up to an additional £0.5 million. A further announcement will be made once the Broker Option Shares have been fully subscribed and the Broker Options declared closed. If the Broker Option is not fully subscribed by 11.00 a.m. on 23 September 2022, orders from eligible investors will be satisfied in full, and the balance of the Broker Option shall lapse. Further details regarding participation, the eligibility criteria, the order of priority, and details regarding settlement, are set out in more detail below.
  • The Placing Price is at a discount of approximately 11.1 per cent. to the closing middle market price of 2.25 pence per Existing Ordinary Share on 20 September 2022, being the latest Dealing Day prior to the publication of this announcement.
  • The Placing Shares, the Subscription Shares and the Broker Option Shares (together the "Fundraising Shares") will, if fully subscribed, represent approximately 75.2 per cent. of the Company's Enlarged Share Capital.
  • The proceeds receivable by the Company from the Fundraising on Admission amount to a minimum of £3.0 million (before expenses) and approximately £2.8 million (net of expenses) (assuming that no Broker Option Shares are issued). If the Broker Option Shares are issued in full, the proceeds receivable by the Company from the Fundraising amount to £3.5 million (before expenses) and approximately £3.2 million (net of expenses) from the issue of 175,000,000 Fundraising Shares.
  • Singer Capital Markets Advisory LLP is acting as nominated adviser to the Company in connection with the Fundraising and Admission and Singer Capital Markets Securities Limited ("Singer Capital Markets") is acting as joint broker and joint bookrunner in connection with the Placing. Turner Pope (together with Singer Capital Markets, the "Joint Bookrunners") are acting as joint broker and joint bookrunner in connection with the Fundraising.

- The Fundraising is wholly conditional upon, among other things, the resolutions (the "Resolutions") required to implement the Fundraising being duly passed by Shareholders at the general meeting proposed to be held at the offices of Osborne Clarke LLP at One London Wall, London EC2Y 5EB at 10.00 a.m. on 7 October 2022 (the "General Meeting").

  • A circular, containing further details of the Fundraising and convening the General Meeting in order to pass the Resolutions (the "Circular"), is expected to be despatched to Shareholders on or around 21 September 2022 and the Circular, once published, will be available on the Company's website at www.actual-experience.com.

Broker Option

  • The Broker Option has been granted primarily to facilitate the participation by existing Shareholders. Non-shareholders of the Company can also participate in the event that the existing Shareholders do not apply for the Broker Option Shares in full.
  • Parties who wish to register their interest in participating in the Broker Option should contact Turner Pope either by email (info@turnerpope.com) or telephone on +44 (0)20 3657 0050. Each application should state the number of Broker Option Shares that the interested party wishes to acquire at the Placing Price and should be submitted to Turner Pope no later than 11.00 a.m. on 23 September 2022.
  • Turner Pope may choose not to accept applications and/or to accept applications, either in whole or in part, on the basis of allocations determined at their sole discretion (after consultation with the Company) and may scale down any bids for this purpose on such basis as Turner Pope may determine. If the Broker Option is not fully subscribed by 11.00 a.m. on 23 September 2022, orders from eligible investors will be satisfied in full, and the balance of the Broker Option shall lapse.
  • It is expected that, following allocations by Turner Pope (in consultation with the Company), application will be made for Admission of the relevant number of Broker Option Shares. Admission is expected to become effective and trading of the Broker Option Shares will commence at 8.00 a.m. on 10 October 2022. Following Admission, such Broker Option Shares will rank pari passu with the Existing Ordinary Shares.

Operational highlights

  • New leadership team in place including new senior management appointees focused on commercial delivery, and the recently appointed Chair assuming the role of Executive Chair during the CEO transition period.
  • Significant cost reductions achieved through reduced headcount and other operational initiatives to benefit the new financial year commencing 1 October 2022.
  • New product offering soft launched with successful deployment at scale and with positive customer feedback.
  • Strong business fundamentals remain in place to take advantage of the growing opportunity in the market for hybrid workplace tools.

The Fundraising is wholly conditional, inter alia, upon the passing of the Resolutions at the General Meeting. Shareholders should be aware that if the Resolutions are not approved at the General Meeting, the Fundraising will not proceed. If the Fundraising does not proceed, the Group will not receive the proceeds of either the Placing, the Subscription, or the Broker Option. If this were to happen, the Directors would immediately have to re-evaluate the strategy and outlook of the Group. Shareholders are therefore urged to vote in favour of the Resolutions, which the Directors consider to be in the best interests of Shareholders and the Company as a whole.

Kirsten English, Executive Chair, commented:

"We recently launched a new and enhanced SaaS platform which continually monitors the health of an enterprise's digital workplace and identifies both cost efficiencies and ways to improve employee wellbeing at work. Our platform targets senior executives who lack tools to analyse and manage today's complex, hybrid and digital workplace.

"We have recruited senior product and sales leaders to spearhead our 'go to market' execution and the proposed fundraising will provide working capital to accelerate sales and marketing initiatives.

"We believe that the business has strong fundamentals represented by unique capabilities, a scalable, high margin business model, and a large and growing addressable market."

Enquiries

Actual Experience plc

via MHP Communications

Steve Bennetts, Interim CEO and Chief Financial

Officer

Singer Capital Markets Advisory LLP

Tel: +44 (0)207 496 3000

Shaun Dobson

Will Goode

James Fischer

Turner Pope Investments (TPI) Ltd

Tel: +44 (0)203 657 0050

James Pope

Andrew Thacker

MHP Communications

Tel: +44 (0)203 128 8666

act@mhpc.com

Reg Hoare

Matthew Taylor

Will Mullan

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Background to and Reasons for the Fundraising

About the Company

As the working world evolves post-pandemic, the global shift to a flexible hybrid model has brought with it a significant challenge; in short, how do businesses create an environment that gives their people what they need to thrive, whilst protecting the commercial efficiency of the business and driving growth at the same time. Actual Experience has launched a new and enhanced Software as a Service ("SaaS") platform, which continually analyses the digital workplace environment and provides boards and management teams with the information they need to address and improve digital working conditions.

By underpinning their strategic decision making with Actual's data-driven insights, customers gain the clarity and confidence needed to build sustainable digital ecosystems within their organisations -

delivering both a great employee experience and increasing the efficiency of the digital workplace. Powered by over ten years of academic research, Actual's service doesn't need any interaction with employees to provide a unique and highly actionable dataset that technology, people and finance leaders can rely upon to plan impactful projects against their most critical agenda items including profitability, wellbeing and other employee-centric initiatives.

Recent developments

Since March 2021, the Company has gone through a period of significant transformation and development. This has included the hiring of a new and highly motivated leadership team including Scarlet Jeffers (October 2021) as the new Chief Product Officer and Roy Jugessur (May 2022) as Chief Revenue Officer (CRO). Further, there has been a 'refresh' at Board level with the appointment of Kirsten English as Non-Executive Chair (having moved from her role as Non-Executive Director in March 2022) and the appointment of Richard Steele as Independent Non-Executive Director and incoming Chair of the Audit Committee (June 2022). As explained above, Kirsten English now becomes Executive Chair of the Company.

This team rebranded the Company in May 2022 when it launched the Company's new SaaS offering, the Digital Workplace Management Platform ("DWMP"). This rebranding also marked a change in the Company's culture from a technology-driven to a sales-driven organisation. The new platform includes a portal/interface which provides rich data on the operational capabilities of the digital workplace by user, department, and geography. This data can provide companies with clear insights on how to improve workplace efficiency, including:

  • identifying which investments make most difference to the digital environment as well as subsequent measurements showing the return on investment over time;
  • how employee wellbeing is improved by ensuring access to workplace tools is optimised;
  • the Actual Human Experience score which shows whether a customers' digital workplace is improving or deteriorating as opposed to them relying on information from ad hoc and retrospective employee surveys; and
  • enabling management to implement improvements to the digital workplace ahead of issues becoming business critical.

The new platform became commercially available in May 2022. Subsequently, the Company has been engaging with both its existing and prospective customer base to ensure that enhancements match market needs. The feedback received to date has been very positive. In August 2022, the Company completed an initial c.30,000-seat deployment of the DWMP with a customer that had previously utilised Actual's legacy product. The new product is expected to go live with this customer in October 2022. During the initial deployment, the platform has proven to work reliably and at scale.

In recent months, the Company has significantly reduced its cost base. At the start of the current financial year (October 2021), the Company's costs averaged approximately £680,000 per month and by the end of this financial year, in September 2022, it is expected that the Company's expenses will average approximately £450,000 per month. This has been achieved both through reducing headcount, from 77 at the start of the year to 46 now, and by means of a reduction in data centre costs through a combination of efficiencies achieved in cloud design and scalability, decommissioning old clouds, reducing internal usage, and changing suppliers to optimise costs. The Directors believe that both the headcount and the cost base have been reduced to the lowest viable level that can still achieve the Company's commercial objectives regarding order acquisition and customer support, as well as developing additional product features.

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Actual Experience plc published this content on 21 September 2022 and is solely responsible for the information contained therein. Distributed by Public, unedited and unaltered, on 21 September 2022 13:09:11 UTC.