IQ-AI Limited kicks on towards one-year high on Keck Medical Center deal

() shares have jumped close to a one-year high after it won a contract with a world-renowned academic medical centre in California to provide brain tumour imaging across multiple sites and platforms.

Mark Shiroishi, director of neuro-oncology imaging at Keck Medical Center and chief of pediatric neuroradiology at the LA County Medical Center hailed the reliability of Imaging Biometrics maps as they “empower our physicians with confidence that we are making the right decisions for our patients”.

This win adds to a stream of positive news flow for Imaging Biometrics since IQ-AI agreed to selling its Stonechecker kidney stone software business to focus on the neuroimaging business.

Elsewhere,  () was shooting 20% higher to 39p after agreeing to a £14.7mln cash buyout offer.

The offer from private equity group Hanover Bidco was priced at 40p a share, a premium to its recent share price but 25% lower than at the start of the year.

Chairman Barney Quinn said the company has not yet seen a return in much of its traditional business “and the ongoing challenges created by the pandemic means that there remains significant near-term uncertainty”.

Up in the FTSE 350,  () was the top riser, up 18% to 617.35p as it secured two further gas sales agreements that represent contracted revenues of more than US$2.5bn over the life of the contracts.

Energean Israel, of which it owns 70%, has agreed to sell quantities of gas of up to 1.4bn cubic metres (bcm) per year, which increases the total firm contracted gas sales from its flagship Karish project to around 7bcm per year on plateau.

The new agreements require no further capital investment beyond Karish North, upon which Energean Israel expects to take Final Investment Decision later this year.

1.36pm: Rosenblatt shares slide as it fails to bring back dividend

City of London services firm () was trading lower on Wednesday, down 15% to 61.55p, after eschewing a dividend due to a sharp decline in first half profits.

While the litigation-focused Rosenblatt law firm performed well, there were no cash realisations from its litigation investment business and the Convex Capital corporate finance arm was hit by further delays and deal cancellations.

Directors said they had decided to postpone the decision regarding any dividend until the year end after the group has moved from a net cash position to net debt of £1.6mln at the end of June.

Results from The Pebble Group PLC () were also mixed, as the promotional services specialist’s Facilisgroup continued to perform strongly while Brand Addition has been slow to recover.

The group still broke even but with a £7.2mln cash outflow.

Analysts at Berenberg said they were nudging up estimates for Facilisgroup but down for Brand Addition, and forecasting higher central costs, leading to a lower full year profit.

11.36am: Salty deal boosts investor, welcome to the Hut

() has no salt on its tail this morning, with the shares looking a little tastier after portfolio company Salarius signed a US distribution deal. 

Salarius has struggled to bring many food manufacturers around to its ground-breaking food technology: smaller grains of salt.

But investors seem to reckon the combo with North American distributor Gehring-Montgomery is a flavoursome development for the AIM-listed company, sending the shares up 34% to 13.35p.

Up on the full list, newcomer PLC (), the owner of the Hut Group e-commerce business, has enjoyed a warm welcome on the first day of trading, with its shares up 26% from their 500p float price to 632.40p by late morning.

The initial public offer of 376mln shares raised £1.9bn at the price, with 35% of the firm’s share capital floated, for a total initial market cap of £5.4bn pounds .

It was London’s biggest IPO since Royal Mail in 2013. 

10.13am: TT tumbles on Big Foot article links

() shares lost more ground after a report emerged that cast aspersions on its coronavirus test kit partner. 

In taste of the investigative article into iAbra, the company that has claimed to have a 20-second saliva test for COVID-19 and which TT said could potentially lead to £280mln of revenue, the Financial Times noted that the credentials of the obscure testing outfit were “muddied by apparent connections to an organisation that spent decades working on hoaxes about the fictional monster Big Foot”.

TT shares leapt over 40% last week when it announced its connection to the test, which has apparently successfully been trialled at Heathrow airport, but were back down 9% to 229p this morning.

Elsewhere, shares in PLC () were not really up 900% as they appeared on some websites, but more like 4% as the company completed a share consolidation.

9.03am: Best is better than expected

Best of the Best PLC () shares revved up 15% to 1,800p in early trade on Wednesday after the company said it expects annual revenue and profits to be ahead of previous expectations. 

BOTB, whose competitions to win a ‘dream car’ used to often be seen in airports but has since moved wholly online, said trading for the new year to end-April 2021 has been stronger since its results in June.

The group also said talks about selling the company with “a number of interested parties from a number of sector verticals have resumed after the summer holiday period, which naturally saw a slowdown in activity”.

Surging even higher was (LON:TILS, ) as it said its demerged StemPrintER business is on track to float on the London Stock Exchange by the end of the fourth quarter, followed potentially by a dual Nasdaq quote next year.

Under the new name of Accustem Sciences, the spin-off will also include Tiziana’s genomics-based personalised medicine business and cash reserves of around £1mln, while allowing Tiziana to focus on its clinical portfolio.

Tiziana will demerge the company via a dividend in specie, where assets are distributed rather than cash before Accustem then allots shares on a one-for-one basis to Tiziana investors.

Proactive news headlines:

(LON:TILS, ) expects its demerged StemPrintER business will be floated on the London Stock Exchange’s standard list late in the fourth quarter, followed potentially by a dual Nasdaq quote next year. The new, independent diagnostics business will be known as Accustem Sciences, and the spin-off will allow Tiziana to focus on its clinical portfolio. Tiziana is using dividend in specie to affect the split. This where a dividend is paid not in cash, but in assets of the company.

() said it has received an Air Quality Operating Permit for its CS Pozzolan-Perlite project in Nevada, the final permit required for a mine and mineral processing plant. No adverse comments or objections were received during the public comment period which ended on September 11, 2020. CS had already received a mining permit from the Federal Bureau of Land Management and a reclamation permit from the Nevada authorities.

(), the iron deficiency treatment specialist swung strongly into profit in its first half following a US$11.4mln upfront payment from ASK Pharm, its partner in China. Revenues for the half-year to June 30, 2020, jumped to £8.9mln (2019: £430,000) with net sales in Europe of Feraccru, its flagship product, rising by 50%. Shield posted a profit for the six month period of £3.1mln against a loss of £4.2mln over the same period a year ago, while there was a cash inflow of £2mln that has boosted the total balance to £6.5mln.

() has entered into a new £3mln convertible loan facility provided by its largest shareholder Kestrel Partners, and at the same time has confirmed stronger revenues in the first half of 2020. The interim results statement from the investment software firm included total revenue of £2.3mln, up from £1.8mln in the same period last year, with organic revenue growth at 19%. Adjusted underlying earnings (EBITDA) in the first half was marked as a £0.3mln loss, while the loss before tax narrowed significantly to £1.2mln from £4.4mln in 2019.

Group PLC () has provided a final update on the status of ventilator deliveries to the UK National Health Service (NHS), saying in total it has delivered a total of approximately £7mln of ventilators directly in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The global medical technology company said that in the past few weeks, further deliveries have been made with a value of £2mln taking the total value of all orders delivered by to approximately £5mln. In addition, the company said that S.L.E. Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary acquired in July 2020, recently completed orders of ventilators for COVID-19 for the NHS worth a total value of £2.1mln.

IQ-AI PLC () said its subsidiary Imaging Biometrics has announced that the Keck Medical Center of USC (University of Southern California) has purchased its IB Clinic software used for automatically generating IB’s quantitative parameter maps. The installation provides Keck Medical Center with a processing solution that allows for standardised brain tumour imaging across multiple sites and platforms for its patients. “We are excited that Keck Medical Center has adopted our brain tumour imaging platform,” Michael Schmainda, Imaging Biometrics’ chief executive said in a statement. “IB Clinic’s quantitative output is ideal for major cancer centers such as Keck Medical Center as it automates and standardises care across sites, scanners, and patients. We are equally excited for the collaborative research relationships now established between our two organisations and translating future developments that may result,” he added.

() has said it is “actively engaged” in commercial discussions about its erectile dysfunction (ED) gel ahead of a key meeting with US regulators. The company said it has hired corporate advisers to organise the interaction with potential licensing and marketing partners for MED3000. It believes there is scope for the new treatment to become an over the counter (OTC) product, tapping into a large unmet need. The progress report was provided as part of Futura’s interim results statement in which it was revealed the company had, as at June 30, 2020, cash reserves of £2.62mln. This is enough to see Futura through to the second quarter of 2021 under current plans.

Baker Steel Resources Trust Limited (LON:BRST) saw its net asset value (NAV) rise by 4.5% to 77.2p in the half-year to June 30, 2020. Over the period, Baker Steel sold most of its holdings in Polymetal and Ivanhoe, its two largest listed holdings, and reinvested the money in a portfolio of mining shares and some unlisted businesses. That decision helped the first-half performance, said the trust. Significant events are also possible for its largest holding, Bilboes Gold over the second half,  the specialist mining investor added.

() announced that its portfolio company Nandi Proteins has raised £720,000 via a convertible loan, including a £360,000 investment from the UK Government’s Future Fund. The commercialising intellectual property specialist said the investment from the Future Fund, established to support innovative businesses through the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, has been matched by £320,000 from the group and £40,000 invested by Shackleton Finance, which specialises in secondary venture and development capital investments. Frontier IP holds a 20.1% stake in Nandi.

() has said that given the continued resilience of its business combined with its high levels of repeat and recurring revenues, and with a further three months of trading behind it, its board has approved the payment of a special dividend of 0.61p per ordinary share. The company said its board will continue to keep its dividend policy under close review whilst the current macro-economic and coronavirus (COVID-19) uncertainty remains. Eckoh added that its financial position remains strong with net cash of £12.2mln as at the end of August 2020, and its management remain confident of further progress in the second half of the year.

accesso Technology Group PLC (), the ticketing and virtual queuing group said trading recently has been better than expected as more venues have reopened following the coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdown. Revenue in the half-year to end June 2020 was US$24.6mln (US$50.7mln) as the company faced enforced venue closures from March onwards, though the outcome was ahead of its earlier expectations, the AIM-listed company said. Going forward, accesso noted that nearly 80% of passport and 60% of LoQueue customer venues had reopened, while it has won several new contracts in the ski sector ahead of the winter season.

() told investors it has received a Pre-FEED for the proposed Greenfield Energy LLC oil sands plant in Utah. The report, authored by Valkor subsidiary Crosstrails Engineering, set out to confirm the technical feasibility of a 10,000 barrel of oil per day operation, and make first estimates of capital and operating costs. According to TomCo, the report provides a high level of confidence in the project.

() (OTCQB:NQML) (OTCQB:NQMIY), the base and precious metals producer from its Hellyer Gold Mine in Tasmania Australia, said it has raised £274,805 gross at 7p per share from a UK-based Institutional investor and a group of private investors for general working capital purposes and the company will issue 3,925,789 new ordinary shares under this equity issue.

(), a leading oil & gas drilling and production services provider in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), has said it will announce its interim results for the six months ended June 30, 2020, on Tuesday, September 22, 2020. A conference call will be held the same day at 3.00pm (Egypt) 2pm (UK) 5pm (Dubai) 9am (New York). To participate in the call, investors can email: [email protected]

(), the UK’s largest property franchise, has confirmed that Dorian Gonsalves, its chief executive officer and Louise George, its chief financial officer, will present at the Shares and AJ Bell investor webinar taking place at 6.00pm BST on Thursday September 17, 2020. A copy of the presentation given via webinar will be available to view post-event on the Reports & Presentations page of the company’s website – www.belvoirgroup.com – however, the group said, no material new information will be disclosed.

(LON:SYE) has announced that its management will provide a live presentation relating to its results for the six months ended June 30, 2020, via the Investor Meet Company platform on Friday, September 18, 2020 at 11.00am. The online presentation is open to all existing and potential shareholders.  Investors can sign up to Investor Meet Company for free and add to meet Symphony via: https://www.investormeetcompany.com/symphony-environmental-technologies-plc/register-investor