Escrow Watch: 180 million shares could hit the ASX in the next few weeks

Here’s our fortnightly list of ASX small caps with big parcels of shares coming out of ‘escrow’.

Escrow refers to shares that are held by early investors or directors restricted from selling for a year or two. The release of escrowed shares can have a big impact on a stock price.

As hayfever season takes hold, we’ve counted more than 180 million shares due out of escrow over the next two weeks from about a dozen companies.

The biggest news in escrow land is from beer maker Broo (ASX:BEE). It has by far the most amount of shares about to come out of escrow — with 470 million on October 13.

That makes up a eye-watering 76 per cent of the company’s total. Broo has 618.3 million shares on issue.

Broo also noted that it has 58.3m options being released on October 14.

The company recently added 10m shares through a private placement that raised $2 million.

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The closest to that is Gooroo Ventures (ASX:GOO), an artificial intelligence company, which is releasing 23.5m shares from escrow on October 19 — about 27 per cent of its issued total.

On top of that, 45.9m unquoted performance shares and 750,000 unlisted options will be released by the company on the same day.

Other significant releases are Creso Pharma (ASX:CPH), Lefroy Exploration (ASX:LEX), Bod Australia (ASX:BOD), Black Cat (ASX:BC8) and Mobecom (ASX:MBM), who are releasing between 16 and 21 per cent of the shares they have on issue respectively.

During the period, Schrole Group (ASX:SCL) and Adriatic Metals (ASX:ADT) released 93m options and 4.7m CDIs.

Here’s a list of ASX stocks that have signalled escrow releases before the end of this month:

Scroll or swipe to full reveal table. Click headings to sort

ASX code	Company	Date of release	Shares released	% of all shares
ONX	Orminex	17-Oct	1,166,666	0.2%
ONX	Orminex	18-Oct	1,083,334	0.2%
BDA	Bod Australia	27-Oct	10,717,000	19%
CPH	Creso Pharma	20-Oct	23,200,001	20%
GOO	Gooroo Ventures	19-Oct	23,469,243	27%
KWR	Kingwest Resources	20-Oct	500,000	1%
LEX	Lefroy Exploration	19-Oct	16,721,833	21%
MBM	Mobecom	18-Oct	16,210,480	16%
BC8	Black Cat	15-Oct	9,815,000	17%
ZEN	Zenith Energy	15-Oct	19,502,000	20%
ZNT	Zenitas Healthcare	13-Oct	154,333	0.2%
BEE	Broo	13-Oct	470,252,070	76%