Losses up at Surface Transforms
SURFACE Transforms, which designs and manufactures high performance ceramic brakes for sports cars like the Porsche GT3, has reported an increase in half year losses.
The AIM-listed Ellesmere Port-based company, which is also developing products for the aerospace sector, raised more than £1m last year through a rights issue to invest in its manufacturing facility and take on more engineers.
Chairman David Bundred said the board was pleased with progress and still talking to investors with a view to addressing a shortfall in funding needed to build the new Chemical Vapour Infiltration (CVI) facility.
He said: “In respect of the three strategic objectives of cost reduction, quality conformance and supply security, the company announced in November its plan to build a new plant and the raising of up to £1.5m to finance this and other projects.
“Whilst the total funds raised were a little shy of what we had hoped, they are sufficient to commence the various programmes and we remain in discussions with certain potential investors to fund the shortfall.”
In the six months to November 30, the company’s pre-tax loss widened to £471,000, from a year-earlier loss of £372,000. Turnover increased to £623,000, from £558,000.
Mr Bundred said: “The company continues to pursue the twin track approach of achieving break even through both retrofit sales and near Original Equipment Manufacturer sales in parallel with winning ‘game-changing’ OEM opportunities in the automotive and aerospace markets.”
He added that the financial performance was better that the figures show, stating: “In respect to achieving our break even objective, the comparison between the two periods is impacted by the inclusion in HY13 of a £154,000 non-recurring technology transfer payment.
“Excluding this contribution, the growth in underlying sales – race products to a major European brake manufacturer and retrofit road car sales – between an unchanged £623k for HY14 and a revised £403k for HY13 demonstrates underlying growth of 54%.”
