Xeros receives cool AIM welcome

25th Mar 2014 12:52

Clothes washing technology developer Xeros received a cool welcome on AIM on Tuesday, as its shares fell from their initial public offer price.A portfolio company of IP Group, Xeros raised £27.6m at 123p as it joined London's junior market, but folded 12% in early trading before recovering partially to be down 7% at 114.5p at 12:45.Chairman John Samuel said: "We have been delighted with the investor response to the placing, which has had strong support from a number of our existing key investors as well as new investors. Joining AIM marks a milestone for Xeros and we look forward to growing the business using the proceeds of the placing and creating value for all of our stakeholders."The company, which had a market cap of £80m at its flotation price, plans to use the proceeds of the fundraising to fund the growth of its commercial laundry business and for incremental research and development to support parallel development of other applications through to commercialisation, not least in domestic laundry.The company hopes its patented reusable and recyclable polymer bead cleaning systems have the potential to transform a number of industries.Xeros is initially targeting the commercial laundry market with the roll-out of 25kg capacity washing machines that exclusively use its patented polymer bead cleaning system, which has been shown to clean better than water and not only cuts water consumption but also chemical usage compared to conventional commercial laundry methods.OH