William Currie Investments, a technology investment firm based in Liverpool, has doubled its stake in Smarttech 247, the IT security firm founded by Cork entrepreneur Ronan Murphy.
Stock exchange filings for London-listed Smarttech show that William Currie took its initial stake in the business in February, buying up 4.2 million shares, equivalent to a 3.4 per cent in the company.
Since then it has doubled that stake to about 6.15 per cent, which would be worth around £1.5 million at the company’s current share price of around 19 pence.
The most recent accounts for Smarttech show it had €12.1 million in revenue in the year to the end of July 2023, up from €10.2 million the year before.
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Its operating costs rose in the same period from €3.8 million to €6.9 million, a large chunk of which related to its flotation in London, which left it with a pretax profit of €204,000, down from €1.5 million the year before.
Smarttech 247 floated on the London Stock Exchange in December 2022, where it raised around £36.8 million (€42.9 million) at a price of just under 30 pence per share.
At the time it was led by its founder, Ronan Murphy, but Murphy has since stepped down as chief executive to be replaced by Raluca Saceanu, who joined the company ten years ago as one of its first ten employees.
Smarttech’s biggest shareholder is Murphy, who controls nearly 70 per cent of the shares in the company.
Other investors include William Currie Investments and Miton Group, the investment fund run by Gervais Williams, one of London’s most high-profile equity fund managers.
William Currie Investments is led by Bill Currie, who specialises in investments in the retail, ecommerce and tech sectors, according to the company’s website.
He was previously an equity analyst for Barclays Bank, and has in the past made investments in online fast fashion companies such as ASOS, Boohoo and the Hut Group, the website states. Other investments include Caffe Nero.
Another member of its board is Sir Terry Leahy, former chief executive of Tesco.
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