Small caps news round-up

Epistem Holdings was gearing up for the next stage of its development programme with the US Department of Defense on Monday, having been awarded funding to proceed. The AIM-traded company received $2.4m (£1.7m) for the first phase of the $7.8m programme in August last year, to develop and manufacture its Genedrive product into a biohazard identification system.

Revenue and profits rose significantly at Smart Metering Systems in 2015, it reported on Monday, as the firm also announced three acquisitions. The AIM-traded company said revenue increased 27% last year to £53.9m, and pre-tax profit was up almost 60% at £17.5m.

Chris Lea was revealed to be jumping from one AIM ship to another on Monday, being appointed to the role of chief financial officer at video security firm IndigoVision, succeeding Holly McComb, who was leaving to pursue “other interests” after nine years. The 49-year-old was currently the finance director at Superglass Holdings - another firm traded on AIM - and had held that role since 2013.

The future of the Port Talbot steelworks in south Wales was hanging in the balance on Monday, with speculation that the board of Tata Steel could decide to close some, or all of its operations within a week. Sky News reported that a meeting of the company’s board was due to take place in India on 29 March, and cited unnamed sources as fearing the worst.

There was praise for the progress made by Angle on Monday, in its quest to see one of its existing products used as a diagnostic tool for prostate cancer. The AIM-traded company was the subject of a report by equity advisory firm Edison, which said that while the final data was yet to be published, headline results from the research study carried out by Barts Cancer Institute indicated Parsortix could potentially perform as well as, or better than the current standard of care in terms of detecting early stage prostate cancer.

London’s AIM could soon see another biotechnology company among its constituents, with the announcement on Monday that SalvaRxwas seeking admission to trading following the reverse takeover of 3Legs Resources. SalvaRx, through its ownership of iOx Therapeutics, said it was currently developing a series of compounds, with the lead compound already funded through to the end of phase II development via a collaboration agreement with the University of Oxford.

Transport components specialist LPA Group has assured investors that the strong "gallop" at which it entered the new year has shown no sign of letting up, with a new contract announced in Qatar. "There is nothing to suggest that the year as a whole will not substantially exceed current market expectations," said chairman Michael Rusch, also revealing some details of the new contract.

Arria NLG announced a new partnership on Monday, exploring ways to add its technology to that of US-based 3D technology firm INOVX. The AIM-traded developer of natural language generation technology said the partnership would see its NLG platform provide real-time advanced data analysis and commentary to IMOVX's 3D asset modelling software.

Filtronic has won a sizeable $7.9m follow-on wireless telecoms antenna order. The AIM-listed maker of radio-frequency and microwave antennas for the mobile telecommunication market said it had won the follow-on order from a major European original equipment manufacturer (OEM) which had recently agreed orders of $3.9m and $2.0m in January and early March 2016.

Payments invoicer Tungsten Corp. said on Monday that it has rejected an offer from former chief executive Edi Truell, who has now resigned from the board. Tungsten said it received an outline of a new transaction from Truell on Saturday, which did not involve an offer for the company’s shares but instead suggested its network business and the cash it expects to receive from the proposed sale of its bank be combined with certain assets in which Truell has a majority interest, including Tantalum.