Crowd-sourcing firm Blur to list on AIM

All the people - so many people - will have a chance to buy shares in Blur Group (not the Mockney rock band) when the business services exchange floats on AIM on Friday, October 5th.

The company is raising £4m through a placement of 4.88m shares at 82p a throw, a price which values the entire company at around £20.1m.

Blur Group owns and operates online, proprietary business-to-business exchanges which enable businesses to buy, sell and pay for business services, including marketing, design, advertising and technology. In the industry jargon, this is known as crowd-sourcing.

Subscribe to MoneyWeek

Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE

Get 6 issues free

Sign up to Money Morning

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Sign up

"Since 2007 when we started to build our first expert crowd, we have gone from 50 expert service providers to over 20,000 as of Q2 [second quarter] 2012," said Philip Letts, Chief Executive Officer and founder of the group.

"During this time the number of briefs has increased significantly. Our ambition has always been to build a UK global technology success story and the IPO [flotation] is a key part in helping us to achieve that goal, and to demonstrate that there is a UK market for technology IPOs," Letts added.

Blur Group has over 20,000 experts, agencies and service provider firms in over 130 countries on six crowd platforms. The company is also building crowds of experts for legal and accounting services, with a view to accepting briefs for these services in the first half of 2013.

In the first half of 2012 the group's total sales were $1.5m, with revenues of $0.98m up from $0.56m in the first half of 2011, and deferred revenues of $0.53m.

It made a loss before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of $0.15m.

The funds from the placing will be used to develop the firm's technology, beef up the sales team, and on providing support services and marketing.

The firm's nominated advisor (nomad) is Singer Capital Markets.

The group's ticker symbol will be BLUR.

JH