SMS Software Company Beget Holdings is in the process of selling 50 million new shares to pay the remainder of its deposit for Ianitor, the Namibian communication software developer it bought in February.
In the first phase of the share sale, 22.4 million shares were sold at 12c a share raising almost R2.7 million to over 600 new shareholders.
Although Beget`s share price is currently trading at 18c a share, the shares were sold to mainly new investors at 12c a share, based on the weighted average price of 13c a share for the period up to March 31 when the price of the shares to be sold were determined.
Beget MD Andr'e Potgieter says of the R2.7 million raised for the shares, R1.68 million will be used pay vendors of Ianitor. The rest of the capital acquired from the sale of the R50 million shares will be used to boost working capital to just over R4 million, a much healthier figure than the R879 727 stated in Beget`s maiden results to the end of December.
The shares were sold to just over 600 buyers with the majority of them being first-time shareholders.
Potgieter says there were two reasons for so many new investors.
"Firstly, the IT industry is bottoming out. A lot of people are feeling it can`t get any worse than this and that things are going to pick up. Secondly, our placement agency, StratEquity, has a lot of new small investors who invested with us."
As a result, Potgieter says the number of shareholders jumped from 500 to 1100, with the number of shares issued rising to 374 million from 351.6 million.
The remaining 22.6 million shares are expected to be sold at 15c a share within the next two weeks.
Beget listed on the JSE in December and established a small message service centre in the Seychelles in January along with Ianitor, a specialist developer of communication software in the GSM and telecommunication fields.
Beget then bought Ianitor together with the intellectual property of British Virgin Islands-registered Hopefield Enterprise Corporation, for R8 million in February.
A deposit of R320 000 was paid on signing the deal with the R1.68 million making up the remainder of the deposit.
Potgieter says the remaining R6 million will be paid subject to Ianitor meeting its R9 million profit warranty as laid out in the agreement.
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