Small caps round-up: Mavinwood, Imaginatik, Castings...

23rd Jun 2010 10:43

Shares in Mavinwood dropped after the emergency repair group reported a wider full-year loss. The group's pre-tax loss increased to £7.8m in the year ending 31 December compared with a loss of £3.9m in the previous year as revenue dropped to £27m from £31.5m.Software firm Imaginatik posted wider pre-tax losses of £1.4m in the year ended 31 March compared to a loss of £0.1m last time after challenging trading conditions in the second half.Foundry group Castings posted a sharp recovery in profits, despite sales falling further. Sales fell from £84.8m to £60.6m in the year to March, as commercial vehicle fell with the economic crisis. Profits rose to £9.8m from £3.6m. Ignoring one-offs underlying profits were £7.6m. "Demand dropped rapidly in October 2008 and this continued for a long period of time, but we have seen a slow increase in demand from mid 2009 which hopefully will be sustained," Castings said. The annual dividend is held at 7.29p Midas Income and Growth IT comfortably outstripped its benchmark last year, with NAV up by 30.7% with its total return up to 42.4% as its discount closed from 11.9% to 4.6% over the year. The dividend for the year is maintained at 6.52p. "The revenue account position is likely to improve further in the current year and we remain hopeful that a fully covered position will be achieved over the next two years," Midas added.Miner Noventa reports that a study by the Univeristy of Glasgow suggests simple adjustments to existing technologies may provide big improvements in its tantalum recovery at mine at Marropino, Mozambique. These processes should also be applicable to the extensive tailings dumps discarded as waste from earlier mining, but which still contain significant quantities of tantalum, the company said.