Listed clinical trials group Hvivo has announced it will remove its shares from the Irish market later this year.
The company, formerly known as Open Orphan, announced its intention to cancel its admission to trading on Euronext Growth from September 2nd in a further blow to the struggling Dublin stock market.
The rare and orphan drug consulting services platform, which specialises in testing infectious and respiratory disease products, also has a London listing.
Hvivo was formed when the group’s chairman Cathal Friel reversed his pharma services business of the same name into Dublin-listed drug clinical trials manager Venn Life Sciences.
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In a statement to investors on Monday, Hvivo noted that its primary operations, along with the majority of its employees and investor base, are based in the UK. As such, the board “decided to consolidate trading of the company’s stock to its primary listing on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange”.
The cancellation will also remove certain costs, complexities and duplication that comes from administering two listing regimes and will have no impact on Hvivo’s ordinary shares, which will continue to trade on AIM under the ticker “HVO”.
Cavendish, the company’s UK-based sponsoring broker, said: “We see this as a sensible move. It is clear from the share price move and appetite from UK-based investors over the past 18 months that there is plentiful capital for what has become a quality growth story.
“The recent capital markets day at the new Canary Wharf unit has been well received by the market, highlighting the significant upgrade that it represents over the existing facilities.”
Mr Friel sold his remaining shares in the group last month “to satisfy institutional [investor] demand” after that capital markets day, the company said, raising £6.14 million (€7.3 million) for the 3.1 per cent stake at 29 pence each.
The number of companies on the Iseq All-Share index has fallen by more than 50 per cent to 25 since Euronext acquired the what was then known as the Irish Stock Exchange in 2018, as takeovers and delistings of public companies outweighed initial public offerings. Only three companies have come to the market in Dublin in the past five years.
Euronext chief executive Stéphane Boujnah confirmed recently that the group is working on plans to set up a “springboard” market in Dublin for small companies to list, in a bid to stem the erosion of the Irish cash equities market. It operates similar Euronext Access markets in Paris, Brussels and Lisbon.
It comes as Euronext is lobbying the Government for assistance to reboot the exchange’s equities business.
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