Small caps round-up: Afren, ValiRx, ECO Animal Health

17th Mar 2010 15:23

Afren is wanted Wednesday after it signed an additional drilling contract for the GSF High Island Vll jack-up rig to carry out planned drilling on their assets located offshore South East Nigeria."The second rig, secured at competitive rates, gives Afren and our indigenous partners the flexibility and resources to complete the ambitious 18 well drilling programme in 2010," said chief executive Osman Shahenshah. "The signing of this contract is an important milestone for our 2010 drilling campaign, the most active period of drilling in the company's history."Biotech ValiRx has sealed a sales and distribution license agreement for its SELFCheck range of at-home diagnostic tests with Eternity Healthcare Inc.Its ValiMedix unit will receive an immediate signing fee and a royalty on all sales.ECO Animal Health is sprightly after it announced a new joint venture for the distribution of animal health products in North America.The jointly-owned business will distribute its owners' veterinary products in the North American livestock and poultry markets.Polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) developer IdaTech saw normalised losses before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation widen to $23.3m in 2009 from $16.3m in 2008, but said this was in line with expectations.Revenue moved up to $6.6m from $5.9m in 2008, with product sales turnover virtually doubling to $4.5m from $2.4m the year before. Revenue from project work declined to $2m from $3.4m.Cash burn was less fierce than expected at $24.9m against cash burn of $20.2m in 2008. Factoring and invoice discounting firm Ultimate Finance is proposing an interim dividend of 0.3p after profit before tax in the six months to end-December 2009 jumped to £0.19m from £0.14m in the corresponding period of 2008. Turnover improved to £2.85m from £2.23m in the latter half of 2008.The company did not pay a dividend at the interim stage last year, though it did pay a final dividend of 0.25p in respect of the financial year to 30 Junes 2009.