Beowulf swings to losses per share in first half

Beowulf reported a consolidated loss of £0.71m in its first half on Friday, widening from £0.39m year-on-year, as underlying consolidated administrative costs rose to £0.72m from £0.4m.

The AIM-traded firm said that variance in costs was largely down to to a foreign currency loss of £0.2m, following the retranslation of cash balances held in SEK, combined with an increase in directors' remuneration and social security costs, consultancy, and research costs incurred in Fennoscandian relating to downstream processing.

Consolidated basic and diluted losses per share came in at 0.08p for the six months ended 30 June, swinging from a profit of 0.06p in the first half of 2020.

Cash held at period end totalled £4.41m, up from £0.62m a year earlier, with the board reporting that the higher level of cash was attributable to fundraising activities completed in December, which raised £7.4m before expenses.

The cumulative translation losses held in equity attributable to the holders of the parent increased by £0.48m in the period ended 30 June to £0.94m.

Much of the company's exploration costs are in Swedish krona and euro, which had weakened against sterling since 31 December.

At period end on 30 June, there were 607,748,200 Swedish depository receipts issued, representing 73.4% of the company’s issued share capital, with the remainder held in the UK as AIM securities.

“Beowulf has a busy back end of the year to look forward to,” said chief executive officer Kurt Budge.

“We will be submitting our comments to the Swedish government regarding the UNESCO letter on Kallak.

“Given minister Baylan's words in recent months about a decision once UNESCO had responded, the acceleration of fossil-free steel making in Sweden and the continued need for investment and new jobs in the north of Sweden, we remain optimistic that a decision will be 'forthcoming'.”

Budge said that on the back of an upgraded resource at Kallak, the firm had once again invested and was now awaiting the results of the mining study, which would support discussions with the Swedish transport agency ‘Trafikverket’, the inland railway ‘Inlandsbanan’, and emerging fossil-free steel producers in Norrbotten such as H2 Green Steel.

“In Finland, Fennoscandian's success with the grant of €0.79m by Business Finland is a tremendous boost and we look forward to applying these funds to our investment programmes especially the further development of our partnership with Epsilon Advanced Materials and the establishment of a strategic processing hub in Finland.

“We will provide an update on developments in the next couple of months.

“Finally, we are looking forward to permits being renewed and the start of an intensive drilling campaign in Kosovo this autumn.”

At 0854 BST, shares in Beowulf Mining were down 2.4% at 3.66p.