Results round-up

Titanium and ilmenite explorer FinnAust Mining’s full year pre-tax loss widened due to the cost of recent acquisitions, with management adding it was wary of the impact the Brexit vote would have on future trading and performance.

For the year ended 30 June, loss before tax widened by 10.4% to £620,059 compared to the previous year.

Cash at year-end fell 46.5% to £425,046, although since June the company had raised £500,000 through a placing of 10m new ordinary shares of 0.01p each at 5p per share.

Nonetheless, Yuen Low at ShoreCap said: "given its burn rate, we expect that more funds will need to be raised shortly".

The Pituffik titanium project in Greenland, which the company bought in December 2015, “has the potential to be in the top percentile of the projects worldwide in terms of heavy mineral grade” and the company’s financial year was characterised by the rapid transformation and progress of the project, as multiple prospects were identified.

The AIM-listed company is to publish the Australasian Code for Reporting of Exploration Results, Mineral Resources and Ore Reserves (JORC code) compliant resource report by the end of the year on the project, ahead of commencing a proof-of-concept bulk sampling programme in 2017.

Chairman Graham Marshall said: “I am confident that Pituffik has the potential to be a globally significant titanium project with a low cost route to market … The remainder of 2016 will see us deliver a maiden resource for the area and strengthen our understanding of the processing requirements for this unusually pure mineralisation, which will in turn aid our end user/offtake discussions.”

He said following the result of the June referendum to leave the European Union, the company “acknowledge that this may have an impact on the company's future trading and performance” and that he “cannot say with any certainty as to what this impact will be, given the uncertainty surrounding the UK's withdrawal from the EU” but the company will continue to monitor the situation closely and “take action as and where deemed appropriate”.

FinnAust also recently bought Avannaa Exploration, a subsidiary of Cairn Energy, which is yet to settle and remains conditional on approval of Greenland's authorities.

Avarae Global Coins, a company dedicated to purchasing, holding and selling rare and high quality coins, continued to trade in line with expectations as full-year revenue increased, while it intends to de-list from AIM.

For the year ended 31 March, revenue rose 22% to £770,000, due to a higher number of lower value European, Indian and English coins being sold, whereas the prior year benefited from the sale of £500,000 individually higher value rare English gold coins which alone generated a gross profit margin of 39%.

While overall revenue had increased, the margin was lower at £30,000 due to the disposal of the lower value coins.

Due to high trading costs on AIM and the difficulties in raising funds for investments, the company decided to de-list, subject to shareholder approval at the meeting on 13 October, to liquidate the coin portfolio over a number of years in order to “return as much cash to shareholders in the most cost effective ways as possible”.

The company is to undertake a tender offer to buy and cancel up to 16.1m shares at 11.5p each, to provide shareholders with a nil-cost dealing facility and an opportunity to divest some or all of their shares.

Loss on ordinary activities narrowed by 81.5% to £70,000.

The carrying value of portfolio of rare and high quality coins decreased 0.5% to £11.2m, while the compound annual returns achieved over the medium to long-term for the highest quality and rarest coins can reach as high as 10%.

Cash balance at the end of the year fell 35% to £570,000 and the net asset value fell to 14.6p per share from 14p, as the company said during the last 12 month there was a cooling in interest in the industry.

During the year the AIM listed company bought 13 coins for £580,000 which, together with the year-end revaluation exercise, resulted in a value of the coin portfolio at March of £11.1m, slight decrease of only 0.35%.