Hot Group seeks 1.25m to support acquisitions

Hot Group, the AIM-listed online recruitment firm, is planning to raise up to 1.25m to help fund its acquisition strategy.

In June the company bought RexOnline, which operates the Jobtrack and Jobsearch websites, in a reverse takeover deal. It now says it wants to buy up other recruitment firms and is in talks with several players, both on and offline.

Hot Group says it''s planning to raise between 800,000 and 1.25m, and has already received commitments for some 850,000. As well as acquisitions, the money will be used for general working capital purposes as the company strives to become profitable.

It''s planning to sell shares in the company at 15p each, lower than the 18.5p its shares were trading at before last week''s announcement.

In its results for the 16 months to 31 August, the company made a pre-tax loss of 4.7m after significant investment into its technology platform and marketing efforts. Its turnover for the period was 2.8m.

Hot Group has cut back on its cost base and restructured its team, but at the end of August it had just 100,000 in cash.


It says sales have been increasing significantly over the last four months and it has over 10,000 visitors a day to its website.



This article appeared NewMediaAge 5th December 2002