Dev Clever attracts ‘significant’ new investor

Dev Clever (DEV FOLLOW) announced that Sitius Limited, an investment vehicle wholly owned by Dr David vonRosen, has conditionally agreed to acquire a material interest in the Company. 

Dr vonRosen is an investor focused on taking significant and long-term positions in highly disruptive and scalable technology businesses.

Firstly, Dr vonRosen will enter into an equity subscription agreement with Singapore-based investor One Nine Two Pte announced earlier this month which raised up to £10 million.
On 22 February the Company received and closed the first £4 million equity subscription.

Another transaction Dr vonRosen will partake in is Dev’s agreement with Intrinsic Capital Jersey Limited ("ICJL") to raise up to £10m which was announced in May 2020. This raise followed Dev’s exclusive three-year global partnership deal with Lenovo.

To date ICJL has subscribed for 40m new ordinary shares and Dev has granted ICJL a warrant to subscribe for 50m new ordinary shares at 25p which would raise £12.5 million.

As part of the aforementioned transactions, CEO, Chris Jeffries, has now entered into a call option agreement with Sitius in respect of 5 million shares held by him at a price of 25p per ordinary share. The call option agreement will be valid until 25 February 2023. The Call Option can be assigned with the prior written consent of the Board of Dev Clever.

Use of Funds

DEV said it plans to use the funds to support its acceleration of its stated growth strategy, including the ongoing development of the Company's marketing efforts in India in line with the rollout and implementation strategy with NISA, and to further support the Company's distribution, alongside Lenovo, in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.  

At this time, the Company's product had been well received in the US market and the proceeds were arranged to be used to accelerate Dev’s controlled internal growth plan in combination with capturing various complementary platform and service extensions that were likely to ‘substantially broaden and strengthen the Company's overall market offering.’

Shares in Dev have seen an over three-fold increase in the past three months. Earlier this month, it said it had delivered “a strong operational performance” for the year ending 31 October 2020 (FY20) despite significant external challenges as a result of the pandemic.

Dev’s work with technology firm Lenovo has provided it with a direct route to the global EdTech market for its careers education products, Launchyourcareer.com and VICTAR VR with the Group confirming momentum has accelerated since the start of FY21 with accounting revenue in 1Q21 alone coming in broadly the same as for the entire FY20.

Booking revenues were substantially ahead of expectations and, as a result, the Company said it expects ‘the rapid acceleration to continue’ throughout the remainder of FY21. The Stock was trading 4.59% higher this morning at 28.03p following the announcement.

DEV price chart

Reason to Follow DEV

Dev Clever Holdings is a software and technology group based in Tamworth, United Kingdom, specialising in the use of cloud-based VR and gamification technologies to deliver rich customer engagement experiences across both the education and commercial sectors.

Its educational division offers careers guidance and recruitment solutions to secondary schools, colleges, universities, apprenticeship providers and employers with digital products to recruit and develop applicants and skills within their institutions and organisations.

Through its VR Careers Experience, VICTAR, the group encourages ‘hard to reach students disengaged from the process as well as reaffirming students on their career journey.’ 

Focused on bridging this global skills gap, DEV offers technology designed to support schools globally and to embrace immersive technology and revolutionise career guidance programs.  

Due to a new reality of distance learning in the age of the COVID-19 pandemic, the EdTech space has surged with analysts previously reporting an average increase in revenue of 335% according to an industry impact analysis by Rootstrap.   

According to market data published by MarketsandMarkets, the EdTech and Smart Classroom Market size is expected to grow globally from $85.8 billion in 2020 to $181.3 billion by 2025.

In May this year DEV entered into an agreement with Intrinsic Capital Jersey Ltd, founded by serial entrepreneur and investor Chris Akers, to raise up to £10m (gross) through a subscription at 10p.

The fund raised in May enabled DEV to accelerate its growth plans with collaboration partners and clients whilst also funding the expansion of the Company into new territories.

The valuation multiples for EdTech Companies continues to rise as larger multinational companies acquire innovative players in the space to capture growth.

In recent weeks, the Company announced that it had entered into a five-year exclusive partnership agreement with Veative Labs (“Veative”) and the National Independent Schools Alliance (“NISA”), India’s largest governing body for budget private educational institutions.

The agreement saw all parties execute an implementation and rollout schedule from last month, which will result in Dev’s Launchyourcareer being utilised by NISA as the platform-of-choice to deliver a minimum standard of career guidance across its schools.

NISA represents over 70,000 budget private schools in India, attended by c.13 million students. Chris Jeffries, Chief Executive of Dev Clever, has described the agreement as “a significant opportunity to support the development of millions of young people in India.”

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