Serial entrepreneur Cathal Friel has raised £6.14 million (€7.3 million) selling his entire 3.1 per cent stake in London-based clinical trials company Hvivo, where he is chairman.
Hvivo said Mr Friel sold his almost 21.2 million of shares on Tuesday at 29 pence each “to satisfy institutional [investor] demand post the company’s recent capital markets event”.
The shares were held by Raglan Road Capital Ltd, a company he co-owns with his wife, Pamela Iyer, and another one of his vehicles, Horizon Medical Technologies Ltd.
Shares in the company fell as much as 7 per cent in London to 28.6 pence after the disclosure.
The shares had advanced up to 11 per cent on the market in the wake of the capital markets day last Wednesday, in which Hvivo said that its revenues rose 31 per cent in the first half to £35.6 million and reaffirmed its guidance the turnover would reach £62 million for the full year.
Hvivo, which is listed in London and Dublin, has a market value of just over €220 million. The business is the result of a series deals by the Donegal native over the past five years.
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Mr Friel orchestrated the initial public offering of Open Orphan, a pharma services company, in 2019 through the reverse takeover of Dublin-listed Venn Life Sciences.
The company went on later that year to buy UK clinical trials business Hvivo, which was struggling at the time. The combined entity was subsequently renamed Hvivo.
Hvivo spun out its Poolbeg Pharma unit, which is focused on developing treatments for infectious diseases, in 2021 through an IPO that raised £25 million. Poolbeg’s market capitalisation stands at £63 million.
Poolbeg’s shares have jumped 71 per cent in value over the past 12 months. Mr Friel owns 7.4 per cent of that company.
The businessman’s Raglan Road Capital company has overseen the flotation of other companies over the past 12 years.
It brought Fastnet Oil & Gas to the junior London Stock Exchange market, AIM, in 2012.
In 2015, Fastnet spun off its oil and gas assets following a slump in oil prices. Mr Friel subsequently managed a merger of what was then a listed cash shell company with Amryt Phrama, which was looking to buy and develop a pipeline of drug candidates focused on treating rare and orphan diseases. The 2016 deal was essentially an IPO as it involved a €12.6 million stock offering.
Amryt was acquired for about $1.48 billion (€1.37 billion) last year by Chiesi Farmaceutici, an Italian pharmaceutical company.
Raglan has also put together the London IPO in March of European Green Transition, a company focused on assets and businesses needed for the green energy transition.
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