Stock market|A new name is coming to the growth list of the Helsinki Stock Exchange in the fall, when the shell company Lifeline Spac, which has been looking for a partner for several years, announced that it will merge with the nanotube company Canatu.
Helsinki a new name will appear on the stock exchange’s lists in the fall. The shell company Lifeline Spac I announced on Friday that it will merge with the Finnish nanotube company Canatu.
In the agreement, Lifeline Spac acquires all Canatu shares, option rights and other special rights entitling to Canatu shares. Lifeline Spac says that it is applying for the shares of the future merged company to be traded on the First North growth market of the Helsinki Stock Exchange.
Lifeline Spac is backed by the capital investment company Lifeline Ventures, and the chairman of its board is a venture capitalist and serial entrepreneur Timo Ahopeltowho is also a founding partner of Lifeline Ventures.
“We have analyzed dozens of Nordic growth companies in the technology sector for Lifeline SPAC I. Canatu suits us perfectly. The capital provided can make the Company grow even faster and even stronger,” says Ahopelto in the press release.
Canatu develops advanced carbon nanotubes, as well as related products and production equipment. According to Lifeline Spac’s press release, the company’s products are used, among other things, in the semiconductor industry, the automotive industry and medical diagnostics.
According to the release, the company’s business model is two-fold: the company manufactures and develops advanced carbon nanotube products, but also sells its own carbon nanotube reactors and licenses related technology, with which the company’s customers can manufacture carbon nanotube products themselves with a limited license.
Canatu has grown strongly in recent years, according to Lifeline Spac. According to the release, the company’s average annual growth rate was 108 percent between 2020 and 2023.
According to the press release, the company’s turnover last year was 13.6 million euros and the result was a loss of 600,000 euros. According to the release, about 80 percent of the company’s turnover came from customers in the semiconductor industry and about 20 percent from the automotive industry.
According to the release, Canatu expects its growth to continue this year and predicts that its 2024 turnover will be 20–25 million euros.
According to the press release, the new joint venture between shell company Lifeline Spac and Canatu aims for a turnover of more than 100 million euros and an operating profit margin of more than 30 percent in 2027.
Canatu was founded in 2004 by four researchers who worked in the nanomaterials group of Aalto University. According to the release, the company currently has 127 employees and 188 patents and patent applications in 38 different patent families.
Lifeline Spac is the second ever so-called spac company on the Helsinki Stock Exchange (Special Purpose Acquisition Company).
Spac company refers to a company listed on the stock exchange, which does not have a business and which has collected funding from investors in order to make a company acquisition. Sometimes such a merger has been called a listing “through the back door”, because the listing process is basically lighter for the company that ends up being bought by the shell company than a regular stock exchange listing.
In Finland and other Nordic countries, the listing of spac companies became possible in 2021, when Nasdaq, which manages the stock exchanges, changed its rules.
Lifeline Spac raised gross assets of 100 million euros in its initial public offering in October 2021. The company has therefore been looking for a purchase target for a long time. Now the company says in a press release that it considers Canatu to meet the investment criteria set by Lifeline in essential respects.
According to Lifeline Spac’s press release, Canatu’s current shareholders will now own a total of 69 percent and Lifeline Spac’s current owners will own 31 percent of the shares of the new company after the merger.
Finland’s first spac company was Alexander and Albert Ehrnrooth of the family company Virala Acquisition Company, or VAC, which already merged with Purmo Group, which manufactures heating and cooling equipment, in 2021.
#Stock #Exchange #Helsinki #stock #exchange #entrant #shell #company #Lifeline #Spac #finally #buy
