Revenue falls, losses widen for Versarien

Advanced engineering materials company Versarien reported group revenues of £6.6m in its preliminary results on Thursday, down from £8.3m year-on-year.

The AIM-traded firm said it made an adjusted EBITDA loss of £1.8m in the year ended 31 March, widening slightly from £1.6m in the prior year.

Its reported loss before tax came in at £8.1m, compared to £4.7m, after a non-cash share=based payments charge in the year of £1.2m and a non-cash £3.3 million charge arising from a reduction in the IFRS 13 valuation of the Lanstead sharing agreement.

Cash at year-end totalled £2.4m, widening from £1.7m in the 2020 financial year.

During the year, the company reinvested an issue of 8.75 million ordinary shares into an 18-month sharing agreement with Lanstead Capital Investors, US-based institutional investor.

Net assets were £16.5m as at 31 March, up from £15.7m in the prior year.

Since the financial year ended, a £1.93m strategic investment was made in Versarien by Graphene Lab. including a 5% royalty agreement and a 2% trademark agreement on sales.

It also acquired Spain-based graphene manufacturing assets to provide up to an additional 100 tonne powder capacity per annum, and placed orders for the purchase of ink scale-up equipment to give up to an additional 12,000 litres of ink capacity per annum.

A lease had been signed on a new, dedicated graphene production facility in Longhope, Gloucestershire, and signed a textile supply agreement with Crosslete, with discussions ongoing with a number of garment suppliers.

Versarien had also signed an agreement with one of the world's largest packaging companies since the year ended, to evaluate graphene-based coatings.

“Despite the challenges arising from the pandemic, which not unexpectedly impacted our mature businesses, we have continued to focus on the commercialisation of our graphene technologies and in particular through the ‘GSCALE’ project,” said chief executive officer Neill Ricketts.

“I am pleased to report that the manufacturing scale up is advancing in tandem with the progress on commercialisation of the project's applications.

“Highlights include the development and supply agreements for textiles and the number of infrastructure opportunities following the successful pourings of graphene enhanced concrete.”

In addition, Ricketts said the company was working with multiple industrial partners to develop composite structures for automotive, aerospace, defence and rail.

“We have also demonstrated 40% improvement in concrete strength, 30% increase in tyre rubber stiffness and have applied to trademark ‘GrapheneWear’ as part of the textile commercialisation.

“With this we continue to pursue our strategy of global positioning to ensure that our products can be supplied to multiple sectors in multiple markets.”

At 1550 BST, shares in Versarien were down 3.69% at 35.2p.