Centregold Plc has issued its share prospectus, proving that rumours of a flotation earlier this year weren’t just city jungle drums after all (CI No 2,191). The Birmingham company is offering an as yet undefined number of ordinary shares in a placing and intermediaries offer. 75% of the shares will be placed firm with the remainder being placed subject to clawback – to cover an option being offered to existing employees. The market value of the company had not been finalised but a figure of UKP50m was bandied about by chief executive Geoff Brown. The placing and equity offer will raise roughly UKP20m, with UKP10m of the capital to be ploughed back into the firm to fuel organic growth. The rest of the capital raised will come from the sale of shares by existing shareholders – two sleeping partners are selling all their shares. The management will retain just under 50% of the company. The intermediaries offer closes on the October 22 with dealing due to start six days later. Centregold Plc is split into two main divisions: Centresoft is the distribution arm of the firm and US Gold is the publishing side. Alongside Centresoft lies IBD, which sells low-cost business software and peripherals. Within Centresoft is the distribution services company PDQ which provides facilities including warehousing and complete sales order processing, and small retail firm Electric Dreams, with two outlets. Within US Gold is US Gold Inc. Finally Centregold Plc also has ISM, an entertainment software promotions company. For the year to July 31, the group recorded net profits up 58.7% at UKP1.7m on turnover that rose 38.6% to UKP31m. Pre-tax level profits also rose this year, by 59.7% to UKP2.7m. Brown will use the money from the flotation – which should eliminate the 45% gearing – to fuel a recent deal with console manufacturer Nintendo Co. Having already scooped up games development agreements with Nintendo’s main competitor Sega Enterprises Ltd, Centregold will be releasing its first products for the Nintendo formats at Christmas. Other aims are to exlore the compact disk-based entertainment software market and to continue collecting games development licences for events – it has exclusive rights to market games based on the 1994 Winter Olympic games set for Lillehammer, and the 1994 World Cup.
