Business coaches line up £3m buy and Aim float
Ian Brookes, managing director of Wining Pitch, isn’t put off by the current market environment. Despite only listing the Manchester-based consultancy on the Plus market in December, he and founder John Leach, are planning an AIM float within the year.
Moreover, Winning Pitch’s plans to raise £3m to help fund a specific acquisition – due to be announced shortly- and the development of its own television channel are proceeding full throttle.
“We have someone who is prepared to give us the full amount immediately,” said Brookes, adding that the question is whether Winning Pitch itself wants a partner with this particular group or not/ Otherwise it has had several offers of £1m.
Currently less than 3 per cent of the company’s shares are available in the open market despite being listed on Plus. Brookes, who has a 20 per cent take, said the listing was really an exercise in preparing the books for a future listing on AIM. At that point both he and Leach will have to give up a significant share of their holdings if the company is to become an attractive bet for new investors.
Courses and coaching
After recording revenue of £435,000 in the nine months to September, Winning Pitch, which provides training courses and coaching sessions to entrepreneurs ranging from business people through to young offenders, took £235,000 in December alone and expected to take about £200,000 again in March, according to Brookes.
In the first half of the current year he expects revenue to top £500,000, and that is purely from the groups training courses.
In addition, it has recently signed a contract with production company Ten Alps to trial its Winning Pitch TV and is considering a push into workspace management. Brookes said he even envisages the company’s training programmes being available as a standard channel on Internet television, although it is not clear how this can be made to generate revenue.
There is a concern that so much of the company’s business – currently about 90 per cent and in the long run probably at least 80 per cent, according to Brookes – comes from local authorities and government-funded regeneration programmes.
While there is no sign of a slow down in the amount of money available – a total of £529m has to be spent in the North West by December 2009, according to Brookes, only about a third of the companies Winning Pitch works with as part of these programmes actually stays with the company on a commercial basis afterwards.
However, competition is hotting up. Winning Pitch has just lost out on one contract to Deloitte and is currently waiting to hear whether it has beaten off rivals such as A4E, which has offices in Manchester, Cambridge –based SQW and Oxford Innovation, for another £10m contract. With the headcount about to jump from 15 to 43 on completion of the acquisition, growing too quickly has to be another concern.