EQUITY MARKETS might be shot but that hasn’t deterred the backers of Dublin-based Captive Audience Display Solutions (C-Ads) from listing today on the lightly regulated Plus market in London.

C-Ads runs advertisements on TV screens at petrol forecourts. In Ireland, you’ll see them at Topaz, Texaco, Esso and Top stations, and it claims to have an audience of 1.8 million a month.

Its plan now is to extend the footprint overseas and, with a couple of big deals in the pipeline, management has decided to float.

“In hindsight we should have gone last year to the market, but we were negotiating a [pan-European] deal at the time with Shell, which we thought would be concluded by September 30th, but the contract negotiations have been quite protracted,” said executive chairman Liam McGrattan.

He said C-Ads was close to a deal with Pace Petroleum in the UK that would see its TV screens added to 450 forecourts in south England. It is also in talks with the BBC to carry a version of its news service. “The beauty of this is that we can reach a cross-section of the population whether they like it or not,” McGrattan said.

C-Ads also has a deal in the Middle East on the boil. McGrattan declined to reveal the identity of the company, but said it was a TV broadcaster with operations in the United Arab Emirates. If signed, it could lead to that company pumping money into the Irish business and it taking a dual listing in Dubai, according to McGrattan.

C-Ads has some glamorous backers, including Celia Larkin, former squeeze of ex-taoiseach Bertie Ahern; Tom Anderson of Ward Anderson cinema group; and Emmet O’Connell of Great Western Mining Corporation.

C-Ads has losses of about €1.5 million to date and is expected to post revenues of just €400,000 this year. It will have a market cap of about £11 million (€13.9 million).