LONDON -- British ATM operator Cardpoint has announced its intent to join the UK's Alternative Investment Market, which would allow the company to double the number of ATMs it manages, according to a report in The Guardian.
The Alternative Investment Market, operated by the London Stock Exchange, is a market for smaller, growing companies, according to its Web site. Once a company has been listed on AIM for two years, it typically earns the opportunity to gain admittance to the main market using a special expedited procedure.
Cardpoint, which was founded in 1999, hopes to raise £2.5m through an institutional placing run by broker Collins Stewart, and hopes to see its shares trading on AIM by next month, according to the report.
The listing will allow Cardpoint to use a £3m debt facility from its lender, Halifax Bank of Scotland, and put the combined funds toward installing an additional 250 ATMs. Cardpoint currently has 188 sites, including some with Moto, a service station chain.
Mark Mills, Cardpoint's chief executive officer, said the company considered approaching venture capitalists, but decided on flotation as a more reliable source of capital.
Cardpoint, based in Lytham St Anne's, Lancashire, recently reached an agreement to place an ATM at the army's Keogh barracks, near Aldershot, which is some miles from the nearest bank facility. "It used to cost the soldiers a £7 taxi fare to get money out, now it only costs them £1.50 (surcharge)," Mills told the Guardian.
