Everyman raises £20m to buy four cinemas: Everyman Media Group has raised £20 million via a placing of 23,529,412 Ordinary Shares at the Placing Price of 85p per share. The Placing Shares have been conditionally placed by Cenkos, as agent for the Company, with existing shareholders and new institutional investors. The net proceeds of the placing are to be used by the company to buy four cinemas from Odeon Cinemas Limited and ABC Cinemas (together being “Odeon Cinemas”) located in Gerrards Cross, Esher, Muswell Hill and Barnet and to fund an acceleration of the company’s organic rollout plan. Everyman currently owns and operates eleven cinemas based in London, the south east of England, Birmingham and Leeds. Everyman also expects to open a new venue in Canary Wharf on the 15th May 2015. Geographically, the target sites complement the existing Everyman estate. The cash consideration for the target sites is £7.1 million and the directors expect to spend approximately £6.1 million to refurbish the sites to existing Everyman standards. In aggregate, the target sites have a total of 14 screens, compared to 21 screens currently in operation within Everyman sites. The target sites reported unaudited revenue of £3.6m and an Ebitda of approximately £0.5 million for the 12 months ended December 2014. Following refurbishment, the Directors expect the target sites to achieve a significantly improved level of financial performance. The directors believe that, within 12 months, all of the new target sites will be fully operational as Everyman cinemas. The placing is not conditional on the acquisition. The acquisition is still subject to financing, a final sale and purchase agreement and landlord consent for each of the individual target sites. However, the terms of the acquisition are largely agreed and discussions with the respective landlords of each target site are progressing and, as such, the directors expect the acquisition to complete. In the event that the acquisition does not proceed the company will retain the proceeds of the Placing to augment its existing cash resources and to supplement its working capital.

Begbies Taynor – election uncertainty stalls business growth: Businesses across the UK have battened down the hatches since the start of the year, holding back investment for growth and initiating recruitment and pay freezes as they await the outcome of May’s General Election, resulting in a state of stagnation across all areas of the economy, warns business recovery specialists Begbies Traynor. According to Begbies Traynor’s Red Flag Alert research for Q1 2015, which monitors the financial health of UK companies, levels of ‘Significant’ financial distress fell just 1% over the past three months to 227,993 businesses (Q4 2014: 240,685), while levels of more severe ‘Critical’ distress increased slightly by 4% to 2,461 failing companies (Q4 2014: 2,362); the first increase in this category since Q2 2014. London was the only region to experience any real improvement in financial distress levels over the period, with ‘Significant’ distress falling 4% in the quarter to 36,788 businesses (Q4 2014: 38,141), compared to a flat picture across the rest of the country. Julie Palmer, partner at Begbies Traynor, said: “Concerns over the outcome of the most uncertain election in a generation have led to a state of stagnation across all sectors of the economy, as swathes of UK businesses guarded against the worst case scenario by postponing their growth plans until after the results have been announced. With economic forecasters predicting that elevated political uncertainty would result in subdued consumer confidence, sharp swings in the value of the pound and rising volatility in the equity markets, many business leaders took the decision at the start of the year to cut back on much needed investment, new hires and pay increases to provide a buffer in the event that trading levels subsided.”