Leader Environmental Technologies raises S$8.7m from fully-subscribed rights issue

THE rights issue of shares by Leader Environmental Technologies (LET) has been fully subscribed, application results out on Thursday showed.

At the close of the rights issue on Aug 27, valid acceptances and excess applications were received for a total of 846 million rights shares. This represents 143.45 per cent of the 589.8 million rights shares available for subscription.

A total of 45.9 million rights shares which were not validly taken up were allotted to satisfy excess applications.

The rights issue, announced in June, was done on the basis of four rights shares for every five existing shares held by shareholders, at an issue price of S$0.015.

The counter fell 0.4 Singapore cent or 6.25 per cent to S$0.06 on Thursday.

On June 8, LET announced that it was planning to expand into the treatment of municipal sludge, industrial wastewater treatment and production of equipment widely used in water and sludge treatment.

It said: "The company intends to move to a high-tech oriented business to differentiate itself from other environmental protection companies. In this regard, it intends to focus on municipal sludge treatment and disposal, and industrial waste-water treatment based on high-end membrane technologies.

It also intends to position the group as a premier integrated environmental services provider, particularly in China, offering a full spectrum of services including technical consulting, system integration, equipment and product supply, project investment, engineering design procurement and construction and operational and maintenance."

LET has raised net proceeds of approximately S$8.7 million from the rights issue, which will go towards investment and/or merger and acquisition opportunities in these areas.

"The group is in preliminary discussions with some target companies in this regard," it added.

Following the allotment and issuance of the 589.8 million rights shares, LET's share capital has increased from 737.2 million shares (excluding treasury shares) to 1.3 billion shares.

The rights shares will be listed and commence trading on the Mainboard from 9 am on Friday.