Seraphim Space (SSIT) raised £137m in its C-share offer before costs: £76.4m in the institutional placing, £45m to retail investors and a £15.1m direct subscription by a single institution. The £529m investment trust and its fund manager said they were “delighted” by the response which came in below the £350m maximum cap but was drawn from a range of investors and was the largest share issue by an investment company since BH Macro (BHMG) raised £315m in early 2023. Just over 136.5m new C-shares will be issued at 100p. “The company will now start to deploy the proceeds into a number of advanced investment opportunities that have already been identified,” it said.
Meanwhile, the New York flotation of HawkEye 360, the operator of a constellation of radio-frequency sensing satellites that accounted for 10.1% of the portfolio at 31 December, has been priced at the upper end of its $24-$26 per share range. The company’s $2.36bn valuation will increase the uplift to SSIT to 38% from the 33% it estimated on 28 April. SSIT ordinary shares rose 4.5%, or 10.2p, to 238.2p.
Richard Williams, senior analyst at QuotedData, said: “In extremely difficult market conditions, SSIT has managed to bag the largest fundraise by an investment company since 2023 – reflecting the strong investment case and growing appeal of space tech. The breadth of investor backing of the C-share issue was also pleasing, including a large retail investor contingent, which at £45m was particularly impressive.”
Saba Capital steps up its campaign to wind down Workspace Group (WKP) by filing resolutions for the removal of five of the six directors on the real estate investment trust’s board at the AGM in July. The activist hedge fund has increased its stake in the £674m London office landlord to 18.2% from 13.5% in January. WKP said it was “carefully reviewing” the requisition and advised shareholders to take no action. The company’s new chief executive Charlie Green reiterated the long-term structural demand from small and medium-sized businesses for its properties in a trading update on 17 April.
QuotedData’s Richard Williams said: “Saba wrote to Workspace’s board in January demanding a managed wind-down of the company and suggested it could sell all of its properties within 12 months. I can only hope that it has moved away from this idea, because that timeframe was fanciful at best and the plan to sell assets into a market that is devoid of activity due to the heightened geopolitical and economic uncertainty, whilst also revealing its hand as a ‘forced seller’ is preposterous.”
Saba has also doubled its position in Syncona (SYNC) to just over 10% from 5.2% in the £545m life sciences fund. This puts the US activist in a position to push for measures to narrow its estimated 49% discount to net asset value and to benefit from the £250m return of capital target announced in October after shareholders told the company they did not want a full wind-down. The stake is held in a range of Saba funds including the £20.2m active ETF launched in Dublin late last year.
Edinburgh Worldwide (EWI), the £837m global equities trust where Saba got its three nominees elected to the board on 30 April, says its new chair is Gabriel Gliksberg, founder and managing partner of ATG Capital Management in Florida. Former Goldman Sachs and Barclays bank executive Jassen Trenkow will head the audit committee and Stansberry Asset Management fund manager Michael Joseph will run the nomination committee that is expected to appoint Saba as investment adviser in place of Baillie Gifford.
Baker Steel Resources Trust (BSRT), the £135m mining fund riding high on the commodities boom, increased net asset value (NAV) by 3.6% last month with NAV per share rising by 6.2p to 180.2p at 30 April. Amid significant volatility in mining shares stemming from the US-led war against Iran, the gain came from continued rises in Canada’s Blue Moon Metals, its fourth biggest holding at 14.2% of net assets, and Devon miner Tungsten West (TUN), the portfolio’s biggest investment at 22.1% after the trebling in its shares this year. Blue Moon raised C$156m (£84m) from investors last week to bring its Nussir copper mine in Norway into production in the third quarter of next year and to restart its recently acquired Springer tungsten mine and mill in Nevada in the fourth quarter of 2027. BSRT is currently the best performing investment company in the AIC Commodities and Natural Resources sector with a 149% total shareholder return over one year. Despite this the shares stand on a 30% discount to NAV. To tackle this in February the company launched its first share buyback programme in 11 years. Last month it bought £116,910 of stock, taking the total repurchased to £983,291.
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