Cheerful Scout to float on AIM

Cheerful Scout Plc, the multi media and animations specialist is floating on AIM. The company is raising £850,000 through a placing and offer for subscription of 34 million ordinary shares at 2.5p, valuing the company at £4.35 million. The deal is fully underwritten by Seymour Pierce, and the money raised will be used to expand and develop the existing operations.
Cheerful Scout was formed by OFEX listed Reverse Takeover Investments (RTI) to acquire graphic media specialists Centralfix. The company, which started trading in 1995, supplies editing and video graphic services with an emphasis on ‘business to business’ communication. They specialise in editing corporate programming, creating graphics and designing animations and special video effects, for clients such as the BBC and Channel Four.
The company also develops concepts, writes scripts and produces a host of internal and external communication needs for its clients. Recently, it has also diversified into commercial DVD, including designing, encoding, authoring and creating a variety of well-known DVD titles for high-street distributors.
Gary Fitzpatrick, Operations Director of Cheerful Scout said: “We are listing on AIM to give us a solid platform on which to grow our business and introduce a ‘one-stop communications solution’. We need to expand our premises, make further technological investments and increase our headcount to fully take advantage of the business opportunities available to us.
“The corporate video market has a projected turnover in excess of £600 million and the future growth is envisaged at 5 per cent per annum. Obviously there is huge market potential for us and we want to position ourselves to become a leading player in our field. Timing was therefore an issue and RTI were able to provide us with corporate expertise and access the funding we required.”
Richard Owen RTI Chief Executive said: “RTI was established to develop and invest in shell companies. We targeted Centralfix as a candidate for a reverse take-over and set up Cheerful Scout Plc as a shell company for the purpose. We recognised that Centralfix had a profitable business that would benefit from our input and subsequently put together this deal – a fully underwritten flotation.”
Cheerful Scout, www.cheerfulscout.com
(KMcA)