Minoan's Steward Travel swallows up Morningside

Minoan Group announced the acquisition of the business of Morningside Travel by Stewart Travel on Monday.

The AIM-traded firm described Morningside as an independent travel agent based in Edinburgh that, over many years, had built up a reputation for “excellent customer service” and was an ideal fit for its Stewart Travel retail business.

It said the consideration for the acquisition was £0.14m, of which £0.11m was to be settled by the issue of 1,203,502 new ordinary shares of 1p each in Minoan at 9.14 p per share fully paid up.

Minoan also announced it had placed, conditional upon admission to AIM, 5,000,898 new ordinary shares of 1p each at a price of 9p per share with institutional and other investors raising £0.45m before expenses.

“The placing price represents a discount of 6.45% on the closing middle market price on 19 May 2017,” its board said in a statement.

“It is intended that the net proceeds will be used to provide general working capital to support the development of the group, including its resort project in Crete and, together with other resources, further acquisitions.”

As a result of the acquisition and the placing, which the board said was done following advice from WH Ireland and with the assistance of Daniel Stewart & Company, Minoan was issuing, subject to admission on AIM, a total of 6,204,400 ordinary shares of 1p each.

“Application has been made for the 6,204,400 new ordinary shares to be admitted to trading on AIM and it is expected that admission will be effective from 26 May.”

The new ordinary shares were being issued under the authorities in existence at the close of Minoan's last annual general meeting held on 27 April.

“Following admission, there will be a total of 211,461,868 ordinary shares in issue.”

The board finally confirmed that discussions were “ongoing” regarding a further extension of the group's existing loan facility, which currently expired on 30 June.

“Minoan will provide an update to the market on the outcome of these discussions in due course.”