An extract from Northland's AIM Journal, August
Companies: ASC, BYG, BOK, DPZ, ETO, GNS, NCC, UTG
Last week, ITV (LSE: ITV) made a bid approach for Entertainment One (LSE: ENO), the Canadian media company, for 236p per share. The offer valued the group at more than £1bn, and would have been more than 11x its original listing market cap of £84.4m on the AIM market in March 2007, just 9 years ago.
In its monthly AIM Journal Report for August, broker Northland Capital wrote about the offer, saying that it showed just how far the film and TV distributor had come since it joined AIM and subsequently the Main Market.
"An ITV bid of 236p a share values Entertainment One, which is known for Peppa Pig, at more than £1 billion. That compares with a market capitalisation of £84.4m at the original AIM placing price of 100p a share back in March 2007. The business was formed at that time by the acquisition of the Entertainment One business, which was a major North American wholesale distributor of DVDs, CDs and video games. Since then, a number of acquisitions have turned the company into a wide-ranging film, TV and music content owner as well as distributor. Entertainment One moved to the Main Market in July 2010."
According to Northland, Entertainment One has built a library of more than 100,000 hours of film and tv programming and more than 40,000 songs. BFG is the latest example of a high profile film the company is involved with, the product of the company's partnership with Spielberg's Amberlin Partners.
AIM success stories
ENO is a great example of the benefits of joining the All-Share-Market, but it's not completely unique. The AIM market has helped other companies move to the Main Market and prosper.
Northland give other great examples:
- Domino's Pizza (LSE: DOM) is a well-known success, paying out much more than its flotation price in dividends
- Booker (LSE: BOK), the wholesaler, nearly reached the FTSE 100 index
- Unite Group (LSE: UTG), who joined AIM in June 1999 at a market cap of £21m, before moving to the Main Market in a year later at £90m market cap (now worth a whopping £1.37bn)
- Big Yellow Group (BYG) joined AIM in May 2000 valued at £97m. Two years later the company joined the Main Market and is now worth £1.14bn
- Animal genetics firm Genus (LSE: GNS) joined in 2000 at £58m, now it's worth £1.18bn
- NCC (LSE: NCC) joined AIM in July 2004, valued at £55.4m. Three years later NCC moved to the Main Market and in the past year it has joined the FTSE 250 index. The company is now nearly 12 times the level it was back in July 2004
Probably the most famous example of an exceptional growth stock that started on the AIM market is ASOS PLC (LSE: ASOS). The ecommerce giant joined in 2001 at a valuation of £14m, and is now worth more than £4bn, a 28,614% increase. A £1,000 investment in 2001 would now be worth just under £300,000.
