Leaf Clean Energy to return £19.5m to shareholders

Leaf Clean Energy announced on Monday that it would return around £19.5m to shareholders, equivalent to 16.5p per share, by way of a compulsory redemption of a proportion of all shareholders' holdings of shares.

The AIM-traded firm said the redemption price per share would be 29.72p, with the redemption to be effected pro rata to holdings of shares on the register at the close of business on 4 July.

It said approximately 55.51% of the company's issued share capital would be redeemed on the redemption date, while fractions of shares would not be redeemed, and so the number of shares to be redeemed for each shareholder would be rounded down to the nearest whole number of shares.

“As a result of the company's receipt of $36.4m from Invenergy in relation to the court-ordered redemption by Invenergy of Leaf's stake in Invenergy, as previously announced on 15 June, the company currently has approximately £28.2m in uncommitted cash,” the board explained in its statement.

“The company plans to use £5.6m of this cash to pay off the shareholders loan, the deferred fees of company counsel in relation to the Invenergy lawsuit, a contingent fee owed to company's financial advisor in relation to the previously announced redemption of Leaf's Invenergy stake, and incentives plans payments in relation to this redemption.”

Following the redemption, and the other payments, the company said it would have £3.1m in uncommitted cash.

“The board intends to maintain sufficient cash balance to meet its costs throughout the previously-announced appeal of the Delaware Chancery Court's ruling on Leaf's claim against Invenergy and the completion of the realisation programme, and would consider further returns of capital in the event of further receipts from the Invenergy lawsuit or from further disposals.”

The company said it currently had 118,162,853 shares in issue, of which none were held in treasury.

All of the shares redeemed on the redemption date would be cancelled.