Results round-up
Safestore upped its dividend by a fifth after a strong financial year in the UK and Paris.
Revenue in the year to end-October rose 10.1% to £115.4m for the FTSE 250 storage provider, with group like-for-like revenue up 8.1% at constant exchange rates.
Within this, the UK rose 9.2% and Paris increased 5.0% as group average occupancy rose 3.5%, with pricing up 4.5% in the UK and 2.3% in Paris.
Tight cost control was a focus, with the newly launched customer website helping cut the average cost per enquiry.
This contributed to a 19.3% expansion of earnings per to 19.8p, with free cash flow swelling almost 14% to £42.4m, the board hiked the final dividend 21% to 8.05p to lift the total by almost 21% to 11.65p.
"As we enter the new financial year, we continue to see good levels of interest in self-storage and remain focused on the significant opportunity represented by our 1.62m square feet of currently unlet space," said chief executive Frederic Vecchioli.
AIM-listed solid-state battery technology company Ilika’s revenue rose slightly as it gained intellectual property patents in China and Europe and entered into discussions with potential licensees.
Revenue increased slightly to £329,000 for the six months ended 31 October 2016, from £254,000 for the same period last year, with the loss per share remaining flat at 3p.
It was granted patents in China for its process to produce to solid state-batteries, and in Europe for its high-throughput vapour synthesis platform.
In July 2016, Ilika confirmed the grant in China for its patent application supporting solid-state batteries jointly filed with Toyota Motor Company on 21 July 2011. This notice followed the successful British grant in May 2014 and the European grant in July 2015.
The company was also awarded a £365,000 grant to develop protected anodes for lithium sulphur batteries
Ilika is currently in discussions with potential solid-state battery licencees, particularly in the medical and industrial sectors.
Its order book and sales pipeline have been reinforced with potentially three new grants - two of which involve solid state battery integration programmes, amounting to revenue of £1.4m over two years - and one new commercially-funded materials development programme worth over $1m over 12 months. Theses programmes will be carried out with original equipment manufacturers and are expected to start this year.
The AIM-listed company had a net cash inflow £4.1m at the end of October, up from £1.5m last year. It also has a cash balance of £7.1m, up from 4.5m, which included £5.8m raised in a share placing during the period.