Blackbird raises £0.5m to strengthen balance sheet

(Sharecast News) - Blackbird announced the raising of £0.5m before expenses on Thursday, through a subscription by an existing shareholder, as the AIM-traded company looked to strengthen its balance sheet and step up marketing for its browser-based collaborative video editing platform, elevate.io. The company said it would issue 22.2 million new ordinary shares at 2.25p each, a discount of about 22.4% to the closing mid-market price of 2.9p on 17 December, raising net proceeds of around £0.47m.

It said the new shares represented 4.85% of its existing issued share capital and would rank pari passu with existing shares.

Admission to trading on AIM was expected at 0800 GMT on 19 January.

Blackbird said the funds would be used to strengthen its balance sheet, increase marketing activity for elevate.io and provide general working capital as the product approaches the end of its product-market fit phase.

The group said it wanted to demonstrate its "revenue engine" ahead of a potential scale-up.

"I am delighted with the progress that we have made with elevate.io since September," said executive chair Ian McDonough.

He added that engagement with marketing teams and creators through events and webinars had helped the company better understand customer workflows, while ongoing feature development was enhancing the platform's appeal.

"As we move towards the end of elevate.io's product market fit phase, these additional funds will strengthen the company's balance sheet allowing us to step up our marketing activity with the aim of proving our 'revenue engine' ahead of scale up," he said.

McDonough said the company was taking a responsible approach to capital management and believed it had "the technology and the team to address a massive market opportunity for elevate.io", adding that Blackbird was executing against its plan to realise that opportunity.

Since its earlier fundraising this year, Blackbird said it had added new features to elevate.io, including AI-powered tools, digital asset management and enhanced editing functionality, introduced a token system to support user engagement and monetisation, expanded marketing through events and webinars, and appointed former Adobe product lead Bill Roberts as a strategic adviser.

Following admission, Blackbird's issued share capital would comprise 480.3 million ordinary shares.

At 1308 GMT, shares in Blackbird were down 15.86% at 2.44p.

Reporting by Josh White for Sharecast.com.