Small caps round-up: Beowulf, E2V, Mobile Doctors...

1st Mar 2010 11:04

Beowulf, owner of several exploration projects in Sweden, continues to believe in the commercial prospects for its asset portfolio which has increased in both quantity and quality as well as resource type. Losses grew to £520,000 in 2009 from £399,000 the year before, but it says future price trends for copper, gold, iron and uranium bode well for its ongoing development.Electronics group E2V warned it has been hit by serious industrial strife at its Grenoble facility, which is materially restricting output. It anticipates an adverse impact on turnover in the current quarter of c£7m, with a significant reduction in group profitability.Medical litigation specialists Mobile Doctors lifted profits by 60% to £800,000 in the year to November, despite bad debt provisions rising to £2m from £1m. Group turnover for the year rose by 27% to £27.6m. "Looking forward, our market faces a potential period of adjustment due to legislative changes as a result of the Ministry Of Justice reforms due to take effect from spring 2010," Mobile Doctors added.Victoria Oil & Gas has completed an equity placing of 431m new ordinary shares at 3.25p per share to raise £14m. The company will also allot shares to directors in lieu of cash salary. The placing was 40% oversubscribed.A swing deep into the black perked up the share price of allergy vaccine developer Allergy Therapeutics on Monday. The company made a profit before tax in 2009 of £5.64m on turnover of £27.34m; the year before it had lost £8.42m on sales of £23.21m. Revenues were up 4% on a constant currency basis, year on year.Net debt at the end of 2009 had been reduced to £7.1m from £30.3m at the half-year stage. The company raised £23.7m from shareholders last year and was back on the fund raising trail in March, raising £2.1m through the issue of 16.81m shares placed at 12.5p per share. Eruma, the specialist provider of counter terrorism, intruder prevention products and intelligent lighting, has won a contract worth £0.38m with Bristol Airport for the provision of energy saving lighting systems.Drug developer ReGen Therapeutics has published details of a medical study which indicate that its brain ageing and cognition drug Colostrinin 'can alleviate cognitive decline in early Alzheimer's disease patients.'The study, by Froud et al, is to be published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease. Shares in Eckoh jumped after the provider of hosted speech recognition services announced it has successfully renewed its contract with bookmaker William Hill for a further three-year period, valued at up to £2.75m over the term of the contract.Shares in Physiomics slumped in the half year to December 31 after the maker of computer systems used in drug discovery said the six month period was 'quiet commercially.' The firm posted a pre-tax loss of £123,000 compared with a profit of £1,000 over the same period the previous year as revenue fell to £117,000 from £211,000.