LONDON (ShareCast) - (Sharecast News) - Proton therapy developer Advanced Oncotherapy has secured additional financing of £12.345m in the form of a two-year secured debt facility with Credit Suisse for £10m, and a direct subscription raising a total of £2.345m from predominantly Swiss institutional investors, it announced on Friday.
The AIM-traded firm said the new funds would support the continued manufacturing and testing of its first 'LIGHT' system to be installed at Harley Street in London, ahead of verification and validation activities that would be carried out at its testing and assembly site at the UK Government's Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) at Daresbury.

It said the Loan was fully drawn down immediately.

The interest rate payable was 2% above LIBOR per annum, with the loan repayable in full in cash at the end of the 24-month period.

Advanced Oncotherapy said the loan was otherwise subject to Credit Suisse's standard terms and conditions.

It was secured against an aggregated amount of £10.5m, with Nerano Pharma acting as third party pledgor having placed £10m in a pledged account, with the remaining £0.5m placed in a pledged account by the company.

As part of the agreement, Nerano Pharma was issued with warrants to subscribe for 3,500,000 new ordinary shares in Advanced Oncotherapy with an exercise price of 100p, exercisable up until 23 April 2024, as well as a legal charge over the lease agreement between the firm and Howard de Walden Estates for the 141-143 Harley Street site.

Under the cubscription, Advanced Oncotherapy said it would issue 5,862,500 new ordinary shares at a price of 40p per share.

The subscription shares had been subscribed for by predominantly Swiss institutional investors.

Completion of the subscription was expected to occur by 14 May, with a long stop date of 20 May.

Application would be made to the London Stock Exchange for the subscription shares to be admitted to trading on AIM on or around 14 May.

The subscription shares would, once issued, represent 2.9% of the enlarged issued share capital of the firm, and were being issued utilising the company's existing share authorities.

"The strengthening of our balance sheet during 2018 and early 2019 has placed us in a stronger position to secure additional non-dilutive funding at attractive financial terms," said chief executive officer Nicolas Serandour.

"We are very grateful for the support provided by equity and debt investors, all of which points to the huge opportunity our investors see for the introduction of our next-generation technology to the market. We are also grateful for the Loan provided by Credit Suisse.

"We are moving forward well with our plans to install the first working LIGHT system at the STFC facility at Daresbury, with the integration of additional accelerating modules to allow high energy testing and ultimately regulatory approval."

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