TIDMNLG
RNS Number : 7477U
Arria NLG PLC
05 December 2013
5 December 2013
Arria NLG Plc
("Arria", the "Company" or the "Group")
First day of dealings and Admission to trading on AIM
Arria NLG plc, a leader in the development and deployment of
Natural Language Generation ("NLG") technologies, is pleased to
announce its admission to trading on AIM at 08:00am UK time today
("Admission"). Dealings in the Company's ordinary shares will trade
under the ticker AIM: NLG and the Company's ISIN code for the
ordinary shares is GB00BGDFC25. The number of ordinary shares in
issue immediately after admission will be 102,281,474. The number
of warrants in issue immediately after admission will be 9,570,987.
The trading symbol for Arria's warrants is NLGW and the ISIN code
for the warrants is GB00BGDFLX36. On Admission the Company is
expected to have an initial market capitalisation of c. GBP102m.
Allenby Capital Limited is acting as Nominated Adviser and Broker
to Arria.
Arria is joining AIM in order to raise the Company's profile and
support the development of the Arria NLG brand internationally,
give access to equity capital as needed, facilitate the recruitment
of high calibre employees and provide liquidity in the Company's
shares.
Stuart Rogers, Chairman and Chief Executive of Arria commented:
"We are delighted to be joining AIM at this exciting stage in the
commercialisation of Arria's innovative technology. The increasing
growth in 'Big Data' in recent years has led to the significant
expansion of our target markets. Our listing at this time is
therefore highly appropriate. Our admission to AIM will raise the
Company's profile and support the development of the Arria NLG
brand internationally. In addition, our AIM admission will give
access to equity capital as needed and facilitate the recruitment
of high calibre employees to help us fully meet the Company's many
opportunities."
Overview
Arria is a UK headquartered software development business. Its
core product, the Arria NLG Engine, originated from research at the
University of Aberdeen, a leading institution in the field of
Natural Language Generation. Arria's target is to be the global
leader in the development and deployment of mission critical, core
industrial, enterprise level NLG software technologies.
Its technology is already deployed in a mission critical
environment, monitoring large scale industrial machinery located on
oil and gas production platforms in deepwater Gulf of Mexico for a
major global oil and gas company and is in use at the Met
Office.
Arria has engaged in three successful rounds of private
fundraising in the past 15 months securing US$40 million of
capital. The last round of private fundraising took place at
US$1.60 (approximately GBP1) a share to raise GBP9.85 million.
Approximately GBP6.1 million of this was conditional on a listing,
but otherwise the Company has not sought to raise funds as part of
its flotation.
As a result of the private fundraising rounds the Company
already has a wide shareholder base of over 200 investors with no
single shareholder owning more than 10% of the shares. The
University of Aberdeen holds approximately 5% of the shares, and
the four NLG scientists who formed the company that developed the
Arria NLG Engine own another approximately 17.5%.
The Company's Admission Document is available on its website at
www.arria.com.
Arria's Market Opportunity
The market opportunity for the Arria NLG Engine has grown
substantially through the emergence of the Big Data phenomenon.
Global corporations have to deal with an ever-growing amount of
data resulting from the digitisation of transactions and industrial
processes and from technological advancements in data capture.
Computer networks are now producing and storing digital data at
such a rate that this data is becoming ever more difficult to
utilise fully. This development, and the challenge to make optimal
use of this data, has become known as "Big Data".
Natural Language Generation is a form of artificial intelligence
that analyses large and complex data sets and reports on the
content and consequences of this data in natural language,
emulating the authoring skills of humans. The Arria NLG Engine has
two main components: (1) an analytics component that is programmed
to embody the knowledge of experts in the domain in which it
operates; and (2) a natural language generation component which
embodies the skill required to communicate information articulately
using natural language. The combination of these two components
means that the NLG Engine can be used to automate the generation of
high-quality written reports in potentially any language, tailored
to the specific information needs of different audiences.
Computational embodiment means that reports can be produced
extremely quickly and with potentially infinite scalability and
replicability.
Humans constantly apply their knowledge and expertise to make
sense of the data presented to them. In every domain of activity,
humans compare their past experience with the real time inputs of
their senses in order to understand the world around them and to
make decisions about what to do next. Over time humans have become
experts in making these decisions, so that they can draw
conclusions effortlessly. The Arria NLG Engine captures and
embodies these decision making skills in the form of algorithms:
recipes for carrying out tasks that indicate step-by-step how to
achieve the required outcomes. The Group's software teams first
learn how experts in a given field analyse and interpret specific
data, and then automate the use of these skills in the Arria NLG
Engine.
Communication of the results of expert analysis is the other
main part of the Arria NLG Engine. To do this, the Arria NLG Engine
makes use of codified knowledge of how language works, all the way
from how texts should be organised at a high level, down to the
specific words that should be used to appropriately communicate
concepts to any given audience. The link between data analytics and
human-like communication makes the Arria NLG Engine a powerful
tool. The Arria NLG Engine automatically communicates results, not
in numbers or graphics that may require further analysis and
explanation, but in narratives that are designed to be read as if
written by a human expert.
The Directors of Arria believe the Company has the following key
strengths:
-- it is a prominent leader in NLG science and its commercial application;
-- many opportunities exist for commercial application of NLG in
the automation of analysis and reporting on large data sets for
enterprises, as well as many other applications across a wide
variety of industries;
-- it has an experienced team with success in software
start-ups, change management, global business-to business branding,
marketing and sales;
-- it has deployed the Arria NLG Engine with a major global oil
and gas company and a government
meteorology service;
-- it is committed to building a robust and pioneering patent portfolio in NLG;
-- the NLG Engine reports in a consistent manner and according
to the style and usage appropriate to the recipient, whether an
engineer, nurse, derivatives trader or other pre-determined group
of people;
-- reports can be written in English or potentially any other language; and
-- the end product can be delivered to potentially any portal or
through potentially any digital means.
Strategy and Objectives
There are many potential uses for the Arria NLG Engine across a
wide variety of industry verticals. The Group's focus is placed on
those sectors that the Directors believe offer strong opportunities
to generate revenue from both Arria NLG Engine licenses and
professional services development work, including oil and gas,
financial services, healthcare and meteorology. Specifically, the
industry verticals of oil and gas and financial services are
regarded by the Company as promising targets for early adopters of
NLG technology. Both verticals exhibit maturity in the fields of
analytical decision support and Big Data analytics. These
verticals, therefore, currently form the main targets for sales
activity and are likely to do so for the short-to-medium term.
Further, the Group's immediate focus is on extending the existing
relationship with its existing client in the oil and gas sector,
continuing to develop the vision of the "articulate" oil and gas
platform and obtaining another oil and gas customer.
To best leverage expertise in the near-to-medium term, the
Group's sales team will seek additional customers that exhibit an
operational profile similar to that of existing customers. Neither
of Arria's customers has exclusivity within its respective business
vertical and the Group's intention is to maintain this
position.
For further information, please visit www.arria.com or
contact:
Arria NLG Plc Tel +44 (0) 20 7100 4540
Stuart Rogers, Chairman and
Chief Executive Officer
----------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------
Allenby Capital, Nominated Adviser Tel: +44 (0)20 3328 5656
and Broker
Jeremy Porter
Nick Naylor
James Reeve
----------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------
Walbrook, Financial PR and IR Tel: 44 (0)20 7933 8792
Bob Huxford arria@walbrookpr.com
Guy McDougall
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This information is provided by RNS
The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
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