LONDON (ShareCast) - (ShareCast News) - NetScientific said it will raise up to £20m through a placing and additional fundraising to accelerate the development of its two lead portfolio companies, Vortex Biosciences and Wanda, and reported a bigger first-half loss.
The biomedical healthcare group said it will raise around £18m through the placing of 15m shares at 120p and £2m through a private placing of 1.7m shares at the same price.

The company said the issue price represents a discount of 19.5% to the closing middle-market share price of 149p on Wednesday.

Also on Thursday, NetScientific said its pre-tax loss for the six months ended 30 June widened to £5.3m from a £2.6m loss in the first half of last year. It attributed the loss to the growing expenditure in research and development, increased share of loss from associates and joint ventures and increase in administration costs.

Chairman Sir Richard Sykes said: "The past six months have been transformative for the group with the appointment of a new group CEO, a comprehensive review of the portfolio and overall strategy, and the resulting focus on digital health, diagnostics and therapeutics only.

"Strong progress has been made in our portfolio companies, particularly Vortex and Wanda, which are about to enter into their commercialisation phases. We have a clear road map for the development of our portfolio companies and with the proposed fundraising today, we will be well positioned to deliver significant shareholder value."

At 1105 BST, Shares in NetScientific were down 12.8% at 130p.

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