The following is a round-up of updates by London-listed companies, issued on Wednesday and not separately reported by Alliance News:
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Barkby Group PLC - Abingdon, England-headquartered company with businesses in real estate, consumer & hospitality and life sciences - Revenue for half-year to December 30 £8.1 million, up from £7.8 million a year before. Pretax loss narrows to £714,000 from £2.0 million. Says Barkby pubs trade strongly between July and September, with record revenue and profit in that quarter. ‘All of our pub venues remained open throughout the period and trade returned to normalised trade levels with the exception of the festive trading period in December, which was impacted by the Omicron variant,’ firm says.
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Catalyst Media Group PLC - London-based investment firm - Revenue for six months to end of December £12,500, the same as a year before. Swings to pretax profit of £450,350 from loss of £421,214 a year before. Registers share of profit of equity-accounted associate of £497,890 versus loss of £384,303 a year before. Says main assets remains its 20.5% stake in Sports Information Services (Holdings) Ltd. Following relaxation of Covid rules in May, SIS’s UK and Irish retail business has returned to normal operations whilst the Digital business has continued to operate at levels above pre-pandemic times. ‘SIS’s profitability for its current financial year to 31 March 2022 is anticipated to see a significant rebound and, SIS’s management expects the company to make a profit for the year as a whole in excess of its budget,’ firm says.
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Location Sciences Group PLC - London-based location data verification - Revenue for 2021 falls to £167,940 from £381,572 year-on-year, with pretax loss widening to £1.2 million from GP507,362. Says location data and verification ‘continues to be a challenging space to do business’, but was pleased to have completed fundraising in May to help ‘shape a new direction’ for the business. ‘During 2021, we have significantly reduced the group’s overheads while ensuring that David and I continue to support the ongoing operations of the Verify business. However, the board expects the outlook for Verify in the medium term to be challenging due to privacy related reductions of location data within the digital advertising industry. As a result, the board continues to explore options for this division,’ it says.
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Global Petroleum Ltd - oil & gas exploration in Africa and the Mediterranean - Pretax loss for half-year to December 31 narrows to $825,890 from $3.1 million a year before. The firm booked no exploration write-offs in the period, versus $2.4 million a year before. ‘The recent drilling successes in the Orange Basin are expected to bring a very strong boost to both industry and investor confidence in relation to Namibian offshore exploration generally. Global believes it is well positioned to benefit from this, and the company is continuing with its farm-out process to fund the next stage of exploration on its licence,’ it says.
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Bowleven PLC - Africa-focused oil and gas exploration firm - Pretax loss for six months to end of December US1.2 million, widened from $934,000 year-on-year. No revenue recorded in either period. Widened loss due to finance and ’other’ income shrinking to $58,000 from $350,000. Says total cash and investment value of $5.0 million should be sufficient to meet company’s needs for at least the next 12 months. ‘As the timing of progress towards FID is not within the control of the group, should the commercial and regulatory issues not be resolved as anticipated in our modelling, it is likely that Bowleven would need to raise additional short-term funding to bridge expenditure to FID,’ it adds.
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Mineral & Financial Investments Ltd - Cayman Islands-based investment company - Net asset value per share 18.62p at end of December, up 16% on a year ago. Says lower year-on-year precious metal prices in the period slowed NAV growth. ‘We continue to believe that the inflationary pressures triggered by manufacturing and transportation delays caused by Covid-19 are not ’transitional‘ and will require policy adjustments by central bankers if they are to be constrained. Therefore, we believe that the mid-term outlook for our commodity weightings remains quite positive,’ it says.
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Equals Group PLC - London-based payments services for small and medium enterprises - Revenue for 2021 rises to £44.1 million from £29.0 million in 2020, and pretax loss slims to £3.8 million from £9.0 million. ‘We ended 2021 in a very strong position, both financially and operationally. The surge in our reported revenue and Ebitda speaks to a successful repositioning of our model to focus on B2B and away from legacy travel operations,’ says Chief Executive Ian Strafford-Taylor. Says 2022 has started well with revenue to March 28 up 78% year-on-year.
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HealthBeacon PLC - Dublin-headquartered digital therapeutics company - Revenue for 2021 rises to €2.2 million from €1.2 million in 2020. Pretax loss widens to €8.2 million from €3.4 million. Says total deployed units more than double to 10,187 from 4,585. Says it has seen encouraging signs of direct-to-consumer unit adoption in 2022 so far. ‘Given the continued momentum in the HealthBeacon offering, the company is forecasting c.4 - 5x growth in 2022 and is tracking to achieve 100,000 units by 2023,’ it says.
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Symphony Environmental Technologies PLC - Borehamwood, Hertfordshire-based plastics and rubber - Revenue for 2021 falls to £9.2 million from £9.8 million in 2020. Pretax loss widens to £1.5 million from £437,000. Says revenue slip due to £500,000 of product missing year-end shipping cut-off. ‘2021 was a year of contrasting results. These financial results do not reflect the transformational effort and success that was achieved in many of our high value development projects that are mainly customer led. We had expected these material changes to positively impact 2021 but repeated and unpredictable lockdowns created logistical and resource difficulties, which delayed the commencement of some large and valuable projects,’ firm says. Says current trade has started to improve following slow start to year.
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Kazera Global PLC - diamonds and rare earths explorer in South Africa and Namibia - Revenue for financial year ended June 30 comes in at £55,000, versus nothing the year before. Pretax loss for year £1.2 million, widened from £1.0 million the year before. Widened loss reflects higher administrative expenses. ‘The uncertainty caused by Covid-19 has delayed the proposed investments by two prospective Namibian investors who still remain positive and interested in investing. In the interim, we have also continued to secure long-term financing through a new loan facility, together with the conversion of the current director advances into a fixed term loan, providing the company with a cash pool to alleviate any short-term unforeseen cash issues that could arise,’ it says.
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Adriatic Metals PLC - precious and base metals explorer and developer - Pretax loss for calendar year 2021 widens to £10.4 million versus £5.7 million in six months to end of 2020. Exploration costs come in at £2.9 million versus £7989,028. Total assets increase to £131.9 million at end of 2021 versus £67.9 million a year before.
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Scotgold Resources Ltd - gold and silver explorer and producer in Scotland - Gold concentrate sales $6.4 million in 2021, versus nothing a year ago, and pretax loss widens to $5.6 million from $2.4 million. SAys significant progress made at Cononish Gold and Silver Mine in Scotland as firm targets production run rate of 23,500 ounces per year by the end of the first quarter of 2023. ‘During the past quarter we have been focused on preparing the access to the second cut and fill stope at Cononish and I’m pleased to report we accessed it as of 21 March 2022. This is a pivotal moment in our mine development plan, allowing us to access reserve mine gold grade more readily, which should see our gold grades increase significantly inline with our mine plan during 2022 and beyond,’ says Chief Executive Phil Day.
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KCR Residential REIT PLC - residential-focused real estate investment trust - Net total assets increase to GBPB27.3 million in half-year to December 31 from £24.2 million year-on-year, though net asset value per share falls to 33.03p from 49.86p. Revenue in half-year rises to £604,583 from £475,407, and pretax loss narrows to £254,265 from £859,476. ‘KCR continues to work within a specific segment of rented residential that is in high demand, is confident that the UK residential rented property market is fundamentally under-supplied, and therefore that it is building a sustainable long term future for the company,’ it says.
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