ASX-listed online recruitment firm LiveHire has closed a $12.5m funding round, money it says will be used towards new artificial intelligence capabilities as well as new technology and working capital.
Melbourne-based LiveHire creates a “proactive recruitment” community for its clients, organised into different talent pools, and the company can then use the pool to hire people.
The cloud-based productivity and talent management firm, which listed on the ASX last June and counts Morgan & Banks and Talent 2 co-founder Geoff Morgan as its chairman said it has successfully raised $12.5m via a placement of 28.5m ordinary shares at $0.44 per share to sophisticated and institutional investors.
Co-founder and growth director Mike Haywood told The Australian the capital injection would allow LiveHire to support the significant sales opportunities in its pipeline, including ASX25 companies, RPO partnerships and key technology integrations.
“LiveHire has raised capital to accelerate the number of talent communities we are launching for clients,” Mr Haywood told The Australian.
“We are fortunate the LiveHire platform does not need to spend money on advertising to attract users and traffic, so instead we invest heavily in our clients,” he said.
Mr Hayward said the company was approaching 100 corporate clients, and was entering what he declared to be a rapid Software-as-a-Service growth phase.
“We do not need to sell a promise,” he said. “In the last few months the inbound requests from companies wanting to launch talent communities has increased fivefold.”
“The Women in Technology portal is a stand out success. Diversity is a KPI for almost all executives, and to be able to collectively attract women to the technology sector proves the value of a shared talent ecosystem model.
“Shared talent ecosystems are the future and will replace the war for talent that traditional recruitment techniques have created.”
Mr Haywood added of the $12.5m raised, LiveHire would be spending $3m on sales and marketing; $2m on technology and integrations; $1m on artificial intelligence; $2m on customer success; and $4.5m on working capital.
“We are extremely appreciative of the ongoing support from existing shareholders and are also particularly proud to welcome a number of leading institutional funds to the register who have developed an in-depth understanding of our industry and our business model,” chairman Geoff Morgan said in a statement.
LiveHire’s shares have performed well since the listing last year, closing the year up 83 per cent. Today they’re up 5.26 per cent to $0.50AUD. The company had a pre-offer market capitalisation of $89.5m.
Morgans Financial Limited acted as lead manager to the placement while Foster Stockbroking was co-manager.
Reader comments on this site are moderated before publication to promote lively and civil debate. We encourage your comments but submitting one does not guarantee publication. We publish hundreds of comments daily, and if a comment is rejected it is likely because it does not meet with our comment guidelines, which you can read here. No correspondence will be entered into if a comment is declined.
