Hardide: revenue more than doubles to £13.5m and profit beats forecasts

Up 7% at 111p (£82m) - Year End Trading Update

Hardide, a provider of advanced surface coating technology, has provided a trading update for its financial year ended 30 September 2026 (FY26).

Highlights:

• Revenues for the year more than doubled to £13.5m (FY25: £6.0m).

• EBITDA is expected to be £5.8m (FY25: £1.0m) and profit before tax £4.9m (FY25: £0.2m), both ahead of market expectations*, as a result of improved cost management and continuous improvement initiatives.

• Final quarter revenues were £4.6m, generating EBITDA of approximately £1.9m.

• Gross cash at 30 September 2026 was £3.2m (after making a £1.5m investment in working capital).

Operational news:

• Trading momentum continues to be strong.

• The company successfully delivered the first shipments of coatings for a new generation of parts for its major North American customer, leading to a further US$1.9m sales order covering the period to November 2026, as announced on 14 September 2026.

• The group has recently won further production work in the aerospace sector, together with new customer wins in the energy and industrials sectors, all of which will contribute to revenues in FY27.

• Testing continues across a number of applications with a potential major energy sector customer in the Middle East, as well as customers in the semiconductor sector, with results to date proving encouraging.

• A deposit of £0.7m has been paid for coating reactors with a total expected cost of £3.5m which, as previously announced, is expected to double Hardide’s operational capacity to approximately £40m of annual sales. The new capacity is scheduled to come on stream during the second half of FY27.

Outlook:

• The combination of strong current trading momentum and encouraging recent order intake underpins market expectations and positions Hardide for further significant growth in FY27, consistent with the company’s strategic objective of more than doubling revenues again over the next two to three years.

* Hardide provides current FY26 market expectations of: revenue of £13.5m, EBITDA of £5.5m, and PBT of £4.6m and FY27 market expectations of: revenue of £18.8m, EBITDA of £8.0m, and PBT of £6.6m.

Ed S’s view:

I initiated a very small position in Hardide back in mid-September at 91.7p, despite the fact that the stock was already up 400% year to date at the time (it started 2026 at 18.5p). I was attracted to the prolific revenue growth, surge in profitability, talk of expansion into other industries, and reasonable valuation.

Today’s trading update vindicates my investment decision. This is a company with significant momentum at present.

For the year ended 30 September, revenue more than doubled to £13.5m. Meanwhile, EBITDA and profit before tax are expected to be £5.8m (FY25: £1.0m) and £4.9m (FY25: £0.2m) respectively, both ahead of market expectations, thanks to improved cost management and continuous improvement initiatives.

Looking ahead, the company plans to more than double revenues again over the next two to three years. It’s worth noting here that revenue in Q4 was £4.6m (34% of full-year revenue).

One thing I was concerned about when I invested here was customer concentration risk – a lot of the top-line growth over the last year has come from a North American customer in the energy space. So it's encouraging to hear that the group has recently won further production work in the aerospace sector, along with work in the energy and industrials sectors.

The company also notes that testing continues with a potential major energy sector customer in the Middle East as well as customers in the semiconductor sector. So, it’s definitely trying to diversify its customer base.

Now, the Stockopedia StockRank system doesn’t like Hardide so much – its score is only 50. But I think that will change.

In the past, revenues have been up and down and the company has consistently lost money. This has most likely weighed on its Quality score.

As for the Value score of 4, this is most likely down to the fact that earnings per share in FY25 were just 0.2p. With earnings of 7.7p forecast for the current financial year, the valuation is starting to look a lot more attractive (forward-looking P/E ratio of around 14) so we should see the Value score rise.

The Momentum score is already high at 92. You’d expect that after a 500% year-to-date gain.

Overall, I remain quite bullish on Hardide, despite its big move higher in 2026. After today’s update, I’m happy to keep the stock on a GREEN rating.