Australian tech whizz Bevan Slattery injects $2.5m into intelliHR to fund global growth plans
IntelliHR will use the proceeds to fund growth plans, working capital, further research and development and product enhancement.
People and performance technology firm intelliHR (ASX: IHR) will launch a $5.5 million capital raising to accelerate its global expansion plans beyond its existing offshore business.
The raising will comprise a cornerstone $2.5 million injection by Australian technology whizz Bevan Slattery (via early-stage investment vehicle Slattery Family Trust), making him a major shareholder in the company.
The cash injection also comprises a fully-underwritten $3 million entitlement offer at $0.075 per share.
IntelliHR has agreed to issue approximately 33.3 million fully paid ordinary shares to the Slattery trust, with approximately 2.7 million shares to be issued immediately without shareholder approval.
The remaining shares will be issued as part of a second tranche following shareholder approval, which will be sought next month.
Under the entitlement offer, eligible Australian and New Zealand shareholders will be offered one new fully-paid ordinary share for every five shares held at the record date, at an issue price of $0.075 per share.
IntelliHR directors Tony Bellas, Greg Baynton and Jamie Duffield have already committed to taking up their entitlements, collectively valued at approximately $200,000.
The offer is fully underwritten by the Slattery Family Trust and intelliHR’s largest shareholder Colinton Capital Partners, for 45% and 55% respectively of the shortfall.
Funds investment
Funds from the capital raising will be used to accelerate intelliHR’s global expansion beyond an existing 24% of annual recurring revenue accounted for by current offshore activities.
It will include an increase in marketing investment for the Americas region following the opening of the company’s Canada sales office in June.
The company said it would work on enhancements to its next-generation, cloud-based people management and data analytics platform.
It will invest in new research and development into insight generation using machine learning and artificial intelligence as well as localisation design such as user language preference customisation.
Workplace changes
Colinton senior partner Simon Moore said the capital raising would allow intelliHR invest in its “highly-differentiated” people analytics capability and support the global changes in workplace structure since COVID-19.
“intelliHR has demonstrated robust growth through pandemic disruptions, with strong growth in subscriber numbers, positive net revenue retention and the rapid launch of the COVID-19 Essentials platform,” he said.
“We believe the platform is well-placed to benefit from the structural shift to remote working and the need for human resource management software tools which can be used to address [things such as] employee engagement and performance.“
He said human resources platforms designed to assist organisations in managing the engagement and effectiveness of a distributed workforce have become a “critical tool” in people management.