MOVERS OF THURSDAY 7 JANUARY 2021 – Vox Markets

FirstGroup (FGP FOLLOW) shares rose 10.57% to 77.9p with $3.7bn bid 

Shares in the transport operator rose in Thursday afternoon trading after it was unveiled that an infrastructure fund run by one of Scandinavia’s most powerful private equity firms has joined the race for the group’s £2.5bn US operations, Sky News reported today. 

Sky News said it understands that EQT Infrastructure had tabled an offer thought to have been worth roughly $3.7bn for First Student and First Transit just days before Christmas. 

FirstGroup operates more than 40,000 US yellow school buses, while its Greyhound network comprises more than 1,400 coaches which typically carry 14 million passengers annually. 

Last month, the group’s chief executive, Matthew Gregory, told investors that it was “in discussions with a number of credible potential buyers who have a long-term perspective”. 

Despite the news sending the stock up, shares have slumped by 42% in the last 12 months. 

FGP price chart

Clear Leisure (CLP FOLLOW) shares soar 57.41% to 0.425p 

The investment company which holds a portfolio of companies primarily encompassing the leisure and real estate sectors mainly in Italy, has seen shares rise by over 20% this year. 

The firm resumed trading on the AIM market back in October 2020 after it finally published its results for the 2019 financial year after a two and a half week delay from the deadline. 

Chairman Francesco Gardin said, “We remain committed to returning value to shareholders as our ultimate goal and remain positive on two fronts; that our technology investments are considered sound, and secondly, that our ongoing legal claims have strong merit for success.” 

The following month, shares rose as the company entered into a binding agreement with Eufingest SA to convert all the investor’s outstanding loans plus accrued interest to date. 

CLP price chart

Online Blockchain (OBC FOLLOW) shares jumped 44.70% to 95.5p  

Shares continue to rise again for the blockchain and cryptocurrency firm which stated that it saw no material impact as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. In fact, for the year gone by, shares in Online Blockchain shares have more than tripled, reaching recent highs of 71p.  

Last week the company said it associated the recent share price movement with its recent £0.4m raise via a placing of 1.8m new shares through Monecor, which trades as ETX Capital.   

OBC will use the proceeds to fund the launch of crypto and blockchain-based products, including a new development project in decentralised finance of a DeFi protocol, Umbria, which the company hopes to commence beta-testing in the first quarter of 2021.  

Umbria’s objective is to enable user-friendly swapping between pairs of crypto-assets by interfacing with existing third-party DeFi protocols such as Uniswap, Sushiswap and Yearn. 

OBC price chart

Webis Holdings (WEB FOLLOW) shares jump 33.33% to 2.2p