Small caps round-up: Connemara Mining, Circle Oil, Kenetics...

21st Jun 2010 11:34

Irish zinc explorer Connemara Mining has intersected additional high grade zinc-lead mineralisation 400m to the southwest of the Stonepark North discovery in Limerick."The Stonepark discovery in Limerick is getting bigger and better," said chairman John Teeling. Circle Oil is "even more convinced" that it can deliver on its promise of accelerated growth and has looked at 60 potential projects in the greater Middle-East/North Africa area. Losses grew to $13.5m in 2009 from $10.7m the year before due to a non-cash charge linked to convertible loans, but first revenues of $15.1m from its operations in Egypt and Morocco led to a maiden gross profit of $7.4m. Shares in Kenetics jumped 40% today after the antenna supplier announced that it has raised £300,000, before expenses, by way of a placing of 7.5m new shares. The shares have been placed with Ken Wong, Chairman and Chief Executive and Yeong Hin Yuen, COO of the Company. Indian based security and facilities management company Mortice said the Indian economy is "beginning to display signs of recovery from the recessionary slumber." So far this year the company has won 76 new contracts that collectively are worth £3.05m per annum.Huge write-offs for its China-based licensee Diamond Wood plunged Accoya wood specialist Accsys deep in the red last year. Losses to end March came in at €52.2m against a profit of €1.8m, after a €35.5m write-off. Revenues fell to €16.7m after licence income slumped 71% to €6.7m. Accoya wood sales increased by one third to €9.1m. Aker BioSciences's adjusted losses rose to $4.6m from $1.2m in 2009 as sales fell to $1.8m from $6.1m. "We believe that the scale of opportunity for our PIFA Heparin/PF4 Rapid Assay, BreathScan PRO, Breath Ketone 'Check' and Breath PulmoHealth 'Check' will be the transformational, long-term drivers of growth and value," Thomas A Nicolette, President and CEO, commented. Ovoca Gold has announced its maiden gold resource estimate for its Olcha gold project, located on the Rassoshinskaya licence. This maiden resource of 344,000 ounces has been generated from historic drilling and trenching data, which includes 16,455 meters of diamond drilling (144 holes ranging in depth from 14.3 metres to 336.8 metres, average 124m) and 12.3 kilometres of trenching. Not all of the historic data was used in generating the resource model mainly due to the lack of data points between various results. The 2010 drill program at Olcha is designed to in-fill these gaps in data points to potentially expand the resource, the company said.Bidtimes, which invests in mining exploration projects in Australia, made a pre-tax loss of £101,358 in the 10 months to 31 December, down from £153,696 over the prior 12 months.