Hardman & Co Research: Surface Transforms (SCE) - Funding for growth: Open Offer

In the past two years, Surface Transforms (SCE) has quadrupled its order book, raised monthly sales run rates from £0.2m to £1.0m and expanded its capacity four-fold to a £20m pa sales rate. A 3 November update pointed to production teething troubles. October sales of £1.0m were below prior estimates, so we significantly reduced our 2023 and 2024 estimates. We estimate PAT breakeven for 2H24. Initially from debt, SCE has the resources to finance capital expenditure from internal cash flow to rai

Hybridan Small Cap Feast 14/11/2023

Dish of the day Joiners: No joiners today. Leavers: Ergomed has left AIM. What’s cooking in the IPO kitchen?** 9 November: Chapel Down Group ITF: England's leading and largest wine producer with an award-winning range of sparkling and still wines, under the Chapel Down brand. The Company owns, leases and sources from 1,023 acres of vineyards in South East England announces its Admission to AIM after its transfer from the Aquis Apex market. The Company will not be raising new capital or providing

Morning Note – 14 November 2023

Surface Transforms - £8.0m placing announced for working capital as output ramps

Surface Transforms has successfully raised £8.0m via an institutional placing (and expected £2.0m open offer) to provide additional financial flexibility to fund the expected increase in working capital as output scales up. Some challenges in its scheduled Q3 ramp-up have occurred, with the required level of output now expected to be achieved in Q1 FY24. We remain convinced that the medium term provides investors with an attractive investment proposition as it ramps up capacity to £75m in 2025 a

Surface Transforms (SCE LN) - Forecasts & valuation suspended

We note the Regulatory News Service (RNS) announcement “Trading update” issued by Surface Transforms on 3 November 2023. We suspend our forecasts and valuation for the Company.

Hybridan Small Cap Feast - 03 Nov 23

3rd November 2023 @HybridanLLP Status of this Note and Disclaimer This document has been issued to you by Hybridan LLP for information purposes only and should not be construed in any circumstances as an offer to sell or solicitation of any offer to buy any security or other financial instrument, nor shall it, or the fact of its distribution, form the basis of, or be relied upon in connection with, any contract relating to such action. This document has no regard for the specific investment obje

Morning Note – 3 November 2023

Hybridan Small Cap Feast - 16 Oct 23

16th October 2023 @HybridanLLP Status of this Note and Disclaimer This document has been issued to you by Hybridan LLP for information purposes only and should not be construed in any circumstances as an offer to sell or solicitation of any offer to buy any security or other financial instrument, nor shall it, or the fact of its distribution, form the basis of, or be relied upon in connection with, any contract relating to such action. This document has no regard for the specific investment obje

Morning Note – 16 October 2023

Surface Transforms (SCE LN) - £100m of new activity secured

Surface Transforms has announced that it has been selected as a Tier 1 supplier of its market leading ceramic automotive disc brakes to the global automaker described as OEM 10

The Hardman & Co Monthly: October 2023

Feature article: Liquidity – shrinking when it’s most needed A review of liquidity in London since 2016 Summary ► Liquidity is the lifeblood of equity markets. ► Following the events at the Woodford Equity Income Fund (WEIF) in 2019, professional investors, increasingly, focus on liquidity when making investment decisions. ► However, this paper shows that liquidity declined significantly between 2016 and 2022. Our work demonstrates that, in 2016, the total value traded of trading companies lis

Surface Transforms (SCE): Interim results

SCE interims, yesterday, reported a loss, so the chairman’s statement of “considerable strategic progress” is notable. We concur. The automotive brake market is strong, all the more so in SCE’s market of carbon ceramic discs. SCE’s order book since end-2020 is up nearly six-fold and it makes an explicit statement as to supportive customers and prospects for more orders. Capital investment is in place and operational for our 2023 sales estimates, and there is clear line of sight for £50m p.a. cap

Frontier Developments (FDEV LN) - Expect change

Initial sales from the launch of Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin have underperformed. After several disappointing new releases, the company has decided to reverse its strategy to diversify into adjacent game genres. We believe the increased focus should improve Frontier Development’s efficiency but may also increase its revenue concentration and volatility. The update and strategic change lead us to lower FY24 Adj LBITDA to £13.6m from £9.0m. We now also forecast no revenue growth over t

LIBERUM: Frontier Developments: Warhammer: Soft trading through key period

Strong H124 profitability and growth plan ambitions

PROGRESSIVE: IG Design Group: Strong profit growth, key strategy initiatives and quantified aspirations

IG Design Group delivered a 27% increase in adjusted PBT to $34.8m for H1 FY24 (to 30 September) with a significant reduction in net debt to $15.1m, as signposted in last month’s trading update. The adjusted operating profit margin was some 270bps higher at 8.6% (vs 5.9% in H1 FY23), the highest achieved since H1 FY20 ahead of the CSS acquisition. Management has provided more details on the key attributes and initiatives for its new growth-focused strategy. The group is on track to return to pre

The Joy of Techs - Cavendish Technology quarterly sector note

£23.3bn in enterprise value has been returned to AIM technology shareholders over the past six years in the form of 51 public to private takeouts, including 10 in 2023 alone with the takeovers of Smoove* and Tribal announced in early October. With UK valuations appearing cheap and looking more attractive to potential acquirers, we take a moment to reflect on the trends of corporate and private equity bidders targeting AIM-listed technology companies going back to 2017, through the uncertainties

Accrol Group Holdings (ACRL LN) - Consecutive upgrades

H1 FY24 has delivered positive trading momentum with continued volume growth and an acceleration in margin recovery back to pre-pandemic levels.

Frontier Developments (FDEV LN) - Road to recovery

We are encouraged by Frontier Developments' announcement of an Organisational Review. We believe many video games companies inflated their expense bases during 2020 and 2021 and reduced focus on return on investment. Frontier now plans to reduce annual operating costs by up to 20% by the beginning of FY25. Frontier's Organisational Review returns the business' focus to optimising returns, leading us to forecast a recovery in adjusted EBIT margins to 5.3% in FY25 and 9.4% in FY26. We believe the

SHORE CAPITAL - Portmeirion (PMP) - House Stock at 353p - Significantly undervalued

PROGRESSIVE: IG Design Group: H1 trading sees significant net debt reduction and profit growth despite lower sales

IG Design Group has delivered substantial growth for the H1 trading period (to 30 September) in terms of key profit measures and margins, together with strong cash flow and net debt reduction, both of which exceeded management expectations. These achievements have been attained despite lower sales compared to H1 FY23, with the adjusted operating profit margin in H1 FY24E therefore set to surpass last year’s 5.9%. As such, the overall results clearly show the ongoing benefits of the group’s strat

Initial Equity Trading Comments - 11 May 2023

LIBERUM: New Energy Nuggets: Hydrogen - the future is green

LIBERUM: Ceres Power - Initiation - A Compellingly solid case

Allenby Capital TMT Update - 16.10.23 - ENSI.L, SPSY.L

Please find below our weekly update covering themes that we feel that are of interest to investors and participants in the small and mid-cap TMT sector as well as commentary on recent newsflow.

Spectra Systems - Punchy H1 feeds into FY2023 and longer term opportunities

Strong H1 results from SPSY today reflect excellent traction with key customers, markets and technology. The company is a leader in machine-readable high speed banknote authentication, brand protection technologies and gaming security software. H1 sales rose 25% to $11.6m YoY (H1-22: $9.3m), benefiting from strong material sales and contracted development revenue, driving 59% increases in adj. PBTA to $5.8m (H1-22: $3.7m). Adj. EPS of 10.8c represents a 72% YoY increase, with the tax burden in

Spectra Systems - Largest ever consumables order from central bank

Spectra Systems Corporation, a leader in machine-readable high speed banknote authentication, brand protection technologies and gaming security software has, as anticipated, announced that one of its long-time central bank customers for banknote security materials has placed a new consumables order for the fiscal year ending 30 September 2024 as part of its five-year contract with Spectra (which was entered into in 2019).