Advertising company Captive Audience Display Solutions (Cads) is poised to reinvent itself as a renewable energy business after shareholders approved a merger with a UK-registered firm yesterday.
Dublin-based, London-listed Cads was established to sell digitally displayed advertising in service station forecourts, but a downturn in the market forced it to seek opportunities to diversify.
Yesterday the company completed a reverse takeover of Proventus Energy, a London- registered company that is building a wind farm in Bulgaria, for €55 million.
Under the deal’s terms, Proventus Energy shareholders received 2.715 billion shares in Cads, valued at two cent each – worth a total of €55.6 million.
The new shares represent a 92 per cent stake in the newly merged group. The Irish company’s shareholders voted for the deal at an extraordinary general meeting in Dublin yesterday. The new entity will be known as Proventus Energy plc.
Cads executive chairman Liam McGrattan will become executive chairman of Proventus. Todor Todorov will become chief executive. The company has appointed Dublin City Councillor Nial Ring as vice-chairman.
Proventus owns 80 per cent of a Bulgarian company, Dobrotich Wind, which has the right to build and operate a wind farm in the northeast of the country. According to a statement yesterday, those interests are worth €36.8 million.
It also has a solar energy arm that is developing a number of such projects. It is valued at €18.2 million.
