Small Talk: Teliti hopes Aim listing will help it raise £2m

After a failed attempt to list on London's growth market last year, the Malaysian IT services company Teliti International will take a second run next month with a stronger financial structure and a new broker to ensure the passage is smooth. The company, launched in 1990, is heavily focused on Malaysia and particularly on contracts for the Government. It is looking to grow and sees a public listing as crucial to its expansion plans. Teliti has three arms: Solutions, Services and Datacentre. The latter is in the process of building the largest such centre in Asia at 120,000 sq ft.

Teliti is in a very different situation to a year ago, when it was desperate to raise £11m from the markets but failed. It needed cash to kit out its data centre, but a collaboration with Cisco solved the issue. It ditched its broker and hired Daniel Stewart, and now it believes market conditions are right to go public. The company will list on the Alternative Investment Market next month.

It is looking to raise £2m to give it a valuation of somewhere around £20m. It needs working capital and will also use the funds to expand its sales teams. The company wants to expand its operations into the commercial sector in Malaysia and expand abroad, where it has operations in Singapore and Hong Kong. Japan will also become a key target.

So why London? It believes a UK flotation will bring it to the attention of European multinationals and a range of investors. It craves the transparency that goes along with a listing and says the move will maintain "a flexible financial structure for future growth". It chose AIM as it is too small to list on the Malaysian or Singapore markets. "The UK also understands the data centre investment story," a company insider added.

Taps turned back on at African Coal mine

It was a good week for African Coal as the South African government lifted its suspension of the company's integrated water use licence at its Vele Colliery mine. Its chief executive, John Wallington, said the announcement was a "turning point" for the company. "It was the last remaining piece to fall into the puzzle," he said.

African Coal has been forced to put the mine in mothballs for about 14 months because of the ban. This not only knocked production, but investor confidence also plunged. The share price inevitably followed. The shares, which had peaked in April 2010 at 2.5p, tumbled 70 per cent to as low as 0.7p last week. The Vele news brought a sigh of relief and a 23 per cent rise in the stock.

Unfortunately, coal will not be coming out of the ground at Vele until next January as it has to clear the mine and deal with the disruption of Christmas, but Mr Wallington believes it has now turned the corner.

Dark clouds gather above PV Crystalox

Sluggish demand for solar panels was already hurting PV Crystalox. But a steady slide turned into a freefall as the Oxfordshire-based company's shares fell 44 per cent on Friday after it said it would make a loss this year.

An expected recovery in its the largest panel market, Germany, now seemed unlikely, the company said, prompting "significant job losses" at its UK factory and reduced hours in Germany. PV Crystalox has yet to decide how many of its 140 UK staff will be made redundant. Reaction from analysts was less than enthusiastic. Peel Hunt said: "PVC is burning cash. Mothballing assets will help but the wider industry picture is unremittingly bad." The struggling producer of silicon wafers and ingots has shed 86 per cent of its market value this year. It is now worth just £31.4m.

Additional reporting by Steve Finch