Deltex Medical Group has announced plans to raise up to 4.7m pounds from a placing and open offer and warned first-half probe revenues would be hit by NHS destocking.

The medical devices group aims to drum up £4m at 11p each from a placing, together with an open offer for existing shareholders at the same price to raise a further £1m.

The net proceeds, which are expected to be between £3.7m and £4.7m, will fund an intended expansion of the company's sales and clinical education team in the US to support expansion resulting from demand received from ten new hospital customers in the States.

Deltex said: "The high quality of the leads received since the start of 2014 have exceeded the company's expectations and indicate a growing recognition in the US of the patient outcome and cost saving benefits of implementing evidence based approaches to fluid management."

The intention is to recruit two further salespeople and three additional clinical trainers, as well as invest in e-learning and customer relationship management systems. The total cost of this investment in US expansion is estimated at £1.7m.

It plans to spend a further £0.9m on supporting a number of operational projects aimed at improving margins, supporting expansion and increasing the breadth of application of its products, it explained, as well as adding to working capital.

The group also reported "satisfactory" progress in each of its UK, US and International market segments, but said that as a result of NHS de-stocking it expects its 2014 UK surgical probe growth to come through in the second half of the year with a relatively flat first half of the year.

The share price fell 14.55% to 11.75p by 14:43.

NR

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