Results round-up

Kodal Minerals, a mineral exploration and development company, mitigated its full year losses by keeping costs low in its subsidiaries and project investments in Norway and west Africa.

The company reported a loss before tax of £465,622 for the year ended 31 March 2016. For the same period the previous year there was a loss of £3.9m.

In the year ended 31 March 2015 the group was hit by a £3.4m impairment at its Kodal mining project in southern Norway due to a significant fall in iron ore prices. Kodal said capitalised expenditure of the project continued to be impaired in the following year as commodity prices have not recovered to a point which the company sees as "potentially economic".

There was a further impairment charge of £50,426 for exploration and evaluation and equipment which was written off. Net impairment charges increased from £285,000 from £597,000 reflecting additional work on the Grimeli project, also in Norway.

Cash balance for the group during the period was £135,000 down from £307,000 last year. Net assets were up £704,000 from £670,000.

Kodal Mineral’s raised £680,000 by placing and subscription of 1.7bn ordinary shares at 0.04p per share. The shares were placed with new investors and existing shareholders. The proceeds will be used to continue exploration work.

Currency manager Record Plc has booked a lower full year pre-tax profit after implementing a firm-wide pay hike of 10%, also flagging the potential of a special dividend for shareholders going forward.

The results -- set against a challenging backdrop of hesitant global economic growth and uncertainty in financial markets -- saw revenue at £21.13m, from £21.06m.

Pre-tax profit was £6.9m, from 7.7m. Record Plc proposed a final dividend of 0.825p a share, taking the total to 1.65p, unmoved from 12 months ago.

"Total expenditure increased to £14.1m, from £13.4m, principally due to the firm-wide salary increase of 10% implemented on 1 May 2015," said chairman Neil Record in a statement.

"Consequently, the operating margin of the Group decreased to 32%, from 36%, and basic earnings per share decreased by 4% to 2.55p, from 2.66p."

Record Plc expected to maintain its total dividend this year.