Bango shares lift as company announces 6.5m-pound share placing

Shares in AIM-listed mobile web payments and analytics company Bango rose on Friday morning after the company announced a 6.5m-pound share placing.

The group reported that it had conducted a proposed placing with institutional investors of 3.3m new ordinary shares at 200p per share to raise £6.5m before expenses.

The placing was oversubscribed, Bango reported, with support from both new and existing institutional investors.

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It said it intended to use the proceeds to be better positioned to take advantage of developing opportunities and increase its capability to underwrite emerging market opportunities.

Ray Anderson, Chief Executive Officer of Bango, commented: "Bango has made significant progress through 2012 and into 2013, with a total reach now exceeding 1bn mobile phone users.

"We have executed on our plan to support a significant scaling-up in future transaction volumes, making key hires to boost our executive and operational team and investing in our technology platform. We have also seen good development across our key metrics, with analytics transaction volume doubling again during 2012 and end user spend growth resuming towards the end of 2012 and into 2013.

Emerging markets potentialGoing forwards, he said emerging markets represented an exciting growth opportunity, with increasing interest being seen from key customers in the areas, particularly in Brazil.

"We believe emerging markets represent an exciting growth opportunity for us, and are seeing increasing interest from key customers in these areas, in particular in Brazil, Latin America, India and other parts of Asia.

"This fundraise provides us with the resources to move forward in developing those opportunities and we are confident that the massively smooth user experiences enabled by our unique technology platform, extensive mobile network operator relationships and industry leading customers provide us with a clear competitive edge in the fast growing mobile payments industry," he said.

Bango's share price was up 7.71% to 223.50p at 09:45 on Friday.

MF