BrewDog blitzes City’s fat cats as crowdfunding drive hits £5m within a month

Aberdeenshire-based craft-beer group and crowdfunding pioneer BrewDog has raised £5 million in just 20 days as a result of its latest round of fundraising.

But with a target of £25 million, the Ellon business has gone to extraordinary lengths to catch the attention of would-be investors.

Yesterday, the company’s two founders, Martin Dickie and James Watt, commandeered a helicopter to drop stuffed cats carrying prospectuses for its latest “Equity for Punks” fundraising plan over London’s City in a potshot at the financial district’s own fat cats.

Mr Watt, who founded the business with Martin Dickie in 2007, said: “Many questioned our target of raising £25m, but we’ve passed the record we set in 2013 in a fraction of the time.

“It’s proof that there is a thirst for alternative finance out there, and that people are sick and tired of the fat cats controlling everyone’s money.”

The stunt formed part of the fourth round of the brewery’s “Equity for Punks” scheme.

A statement on the company’s website said: “Equity for Punks keeps the passion and integrity in the beer glass and puts the people who really care in control. We firmly believe that the best way to develop BrewDog is to offer the people who enjoy our beers the chance to be involved in our future.

“No fat cats. No investment bankers. No venture capitalists. No overbearing parent company. Just loads of people who care passionately about great craft beer. We love the fact that our little company is owned by people who love our beers as much as we do.

“To celebrate Equity for Punks IV, we took to the skies over London to do a little old school propaganda outreach as we dropped Equity for Punks share prospectuses over the city and fat cats over the financial institutions of London. We wanted to mark the launch of our share offer and send out a message to the industrial beer fat cats.”

There are 526,316 BrewDog shares on offer and participants can join the scheme with a minimum investment of £95 for two shares.

With a fifth of the £25 million target raised in the three weeks since it launched, if successful, the initiative will give Brewdog an implied market value of £300m, with the company’s estimated 15,000 “punk” investors holding 23 per cent of the equity.

The money will be used to fund an expansion of its brewery and the development of a craft-beer hotel called The Kennel.

Mr Watt added: “Crowdfunding should no longer be seen as a niche alternative, but a proven, workable option for those libertines and change-makers who want to shake up the status quo.”

However, while the company may be attracting young hipsters who are following the latest trend, some within the crowdfunding industry have questioned whether the current deal is a good one for investors.

Reacting to initial success of the latest Equity for Punks drive, crowdfunding analyst All Street said it is “difficult to see how investors will make a financial return on this deal given the high valuation of £305m.”

Emanuela Vartolomei, All Street’s chief executive, said: “No financial forecast has been disclosed so there is very little clarity as to how the company will hit the revenue targets required to generate a risk adjusted return for investors.

“That said, many participants in crowdfunding deals invest small amounts of money just to be part of the user journey of a new cutting edge brand.”