Results round-up: Altona, Cenkos, Stellar Diamonds

Shares in Altona are up more than 4% after reducing its first-half loss and also confirming its application for a petroleum exploration licence (PELA 666) is under consideration by the South Australian Government.

"The board of Altona, along with its JV Partners remain confident that once the PEL is secured the JV company will commence its test drilling programme at the Arckaringa site, which will in turn lead to a Bankable Feasibility Study," said Altona.

It added the South Australian region was in an economic downturn and regularly experienced power shortages, suggesting a "significant asset such as Arckaringa would be given high priority by the government in order to provide a large number of new jobs for the lifetime of the project and to provide a long-term energy supply for the region."

Alton further noted that the fact remained Altona controlled 7.8bn tonnes of coal and this gave the company a number of options for the future.

The AIM-listed company's first-half pre-tax profit was £241,000, from a loss of £356,000.

Cenkos

Shares in specialist securities firm Cenkos fell less than 2% after it reported falls in full-year pre-tax profit, revenue and dividend, but noted an encouraging pipeline.

"Our successful strategy of being a leading UK institutional broker to growth companies and investment funds has led to us being profitable in every single year of operation and this continued into 2016," said chief executive Jim Durkin.

AIM-listed Cenkos saw its 12-month pre-tax profit slide 78% lower to £4.4m, from £19.9m, with revenue falling 43% to £43.7m in reported terms, from £76.5m. Its full-year dividend fell 57% to 6p a share, against 14.0p a year prior.

Durkin said, excluding the revenues associated with a large fundraising completed in 2015, Cenkos' 2016's revenues fell 12% to £43.7m on the back of lower equity fundraisings for its corporate clients in the first half of 2016.

"There continues to be good institutional demand to fund high quality companies and ideas. ... Since the start of this year we have been engaged in a number of fund raisings for clients and our current pipeline is encouraging."

Stellar Diamonds

West Africa-focussed diamond development company Stellar Diamonds announced its unaudited interim results for the six months to 31 December on Friday, after signing a heads of terms with Octea Mining for the proposed Tongo-Tonguma tribute mining agreement in February.

The AIM-traded firm said the project carried a “robust” attributable post-tax net present value and internal rate of return of $104m and 31% respectively, with the estimated attributable net present value in excess of 40 times the current market capitalisation of Stellar.

It said estimated projected life of mine revenues were $1.518bn.

The company claimed there was a “significant” 4.5m carats resource over the Tongo-Tonguma project with a target of an additional 8 million carats, and confirmed the resource statements, mine plan and financial model were completed by “independent consultants”.

On the financial front, Stellar’s $600,000 interim loan was repaid and replaced by a $1.24m convertible loan.

An additional $660,000 was raised post period-end through a placing, subscription and open offer.

The board continued to reduce its administration costs to $550,000 for the six months.

Stellar Diamonds reported a loss before tax for the period, off nil revenue, of $660,000, narrowing from $890,000 year-on-year.

“With the significant potential of the amalgamation of the Tongo Diamond fields projects in mind, we entered into heads of terms with Octea Mining during the period to combine its adjacent Tonguma project with our own Tongo project in eastern Sierra Leone for commercial exploitation,” said chief executive Karl Smithson.

“The terms of the transaction with Octea began to change towards the end of the year from a planned acquisition of Tonguma to a proposed tribute mining arrangement, whereby Stellar intends to fund the mine development and pay Octea a 10% revenue share of all production from both licences once has recouped our capital expenditure in respect of the mine build.”