Escrow watch: 295 million shares escaping to freedom

Want to know when shares are coming out of escrow? We’ve been keeping tabs, so you don’t have to.

Every two weeks, Stockhead takes a look at the small cap companies that are releasing shares that have been locked away in escrow.

Escrow refers to shares that are held by early investors or directors restrained from selling for a year or two.

The release of escrowed shares can have a big impact on stock price, because a sudden influx of stock onto the market can depress the shares you own.

Over the coming fortnight nearly 295 million shares are being released from escrow.

Galena Mining (ASX:G1A) leads the pack, with 105.5 million hitting the ASX on September 7. That’s about 29 per cent of its issued total. A whopping 92 per cent of these shares are held by the company’s board and management.

UltraCharge (ASX:UTR) has 12 million shares getting released on September 14. The company’s shares have been hammered, falling from year-long highs of 1.8c to just 0.1c on Wednesday.

The company announced earlier this week that electric scooter make Blitz had ceased all testing of UltraCharge’s batteries due to “technical issues with the batteries experienced by Blitz during the testing phase”.

As a result, no sales of batteries to Blitz under the agreement are now expected to occur.

Here’s a list of ASX stocks that have signalled escrow releases in the next fortnight:

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

Code	Company	Date Released	Escrowed shares	% of shares on issue
CHN	Chalice Gold Mines	8-Sep	3,000,000	1.10%
UTR	Ultracharge	14-Sep	12,000,000	1.20%
CLI	Croplogic	12-Sep	34,805,594	8.50%
NTD	National Tyre and Wheel	2-Sep	4,257,274	3.90%
SFX	Sheffield Resources	2-Sep	2,250,000	0.01%
G1A	Galena Mining	7-Sep	105,500,000	28.90%
SVY	Stavely Minerals	30-Aug	378,665	0.02%
RDC	Redcape Hotel Group	29-Aug	51,500,000	9.30%
CE1	Calima Energy	31-Aug	55,790,194	2.60%
TGM	Theta Gold Mines	5-Sep	25,143,471	6.20%