NZX listing drought set to continue into 2019

The drought of new listings is set to continue into 2019. Photo/file.

The drought of new listings on the NZX looks set to last a little longer, with a pre-Christmas debut for articifial intelligence company Arria NLG now off the table.

The company, which specialises in artificial intelligence that can read data and convert it into language, had hoped to list in the fourth quarter of this year.

"It appears we are not going to be able to pull everything together for Arria before Christmas, so the NZX listing will now be done in the first quarter of 2019," CM Partners principal Tim Preston said in an email to the Herald.

"There has been a lot involved with moving the company from the UK to New Zealand and coordinating everything such as audits across three different jurisdictions," he said.

Arria, which de-listed from London's Alternative Investment Market in 2016, plans to debut in New Zealand as a so-called "compliance" listing, which entails the listing and quotation of existing securities without raising fresh capital.

The company - which has historical links to the now de-listed Diligent Board Member Services - is also looking at new technology as a source of funding, such as distributed ledger technologies associated with blockchain, and digital security tokens used in crowdfunding.

Arria NLG - for natural language generation - is headed up by Sharon Daniels, a co-founder and former executive director of Diligent, which delisted in 2016 after its was bought by Insight Venture Partners.

Arria has about around 300 shareholders - many of them New Zealanders and many of them former Diligent shareholders.

Auckland-based CM Partners is acting as the capital markets advisor and NZX sponsor for the listing.

The NZX has seen just one new equity addition this year - QEX Logistics' compliance listing in February.