Good morning! Firstly today I shall look at interim results from PuriCore (LON:PURI 38.5p). This is a company which makes products to "protect people from the spread of infectious pathogens", in particular products for supermarkets to sterilise fresh produce, and decontamination machines for hospitals, also woundcare. The company has had a chequered history, but refinanced in Jan 2013, so seems more stable now.

Checking back our archive here, I've mentioned it twice before, on 30 Apr 2013, when it announced a move into positive EBITDA for 2012, and on 20 Jun 2013 when it announced a contract win.

The market cap is £19.3m at 38.5p per share. There were convertible bonds in issue, but 95% of these were converted into ordinary shares at 40p, as part of a refinancing in Jan 2013. There are now only £375k in loan notes outstanding, with a conversion price about double the current share price, so they are likely to be repaid on expiry in Dec 2013.

H1 revenue fell 4.9% to $24.1m, although they say new contract wins will kick in for the H2 figures. A sharp fall in supermarket revenues, has masked strong growth in (admittedly small) wound care products (up 148% to $1.7m). Note their accounts are in US dollars, so will need converting into sterling for valuation purposes (today's rate is £1 = $1.55).

The Chairman's comments contain this encouraging-sounding couple of sentences:

 

Encouragingly the second quarter was strong with significantly increased revenue from a major US contract, recurring revenue growth, and two new marketing partnerships in Wound Care. With these partnerships in place, new product launches, and a strong US order book for the remainder of the year, the Directors remain confident in the future prospects for the Company.

 

So thye've neatly side-stepped commenting on performance against market expectations, but it sounds fairly upbeat.

Puricore's Balance Sheet really has been fixed by the refinancing in Jan 2013. So it now has net cash of $3.3m, which is transformed from its previous significant net debt position. They generated a $847k loss before interest and tax for the half year, which is only slightly improved from the comparable prior year period. So not a very impressive performance, in that the growth I was hoping for here has not shown itself in the H1 figures. There is a…

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