Companies: OPT   

Wave power specialist Ocean Power Technologies won first orders in Spain and elsewhere last year, though losses reached £4.8 million.

New Jersey-based Ocean, which floated on AIM four years ago at 125p, increased revenues 45 per cent to $2.5 million (£1.25 million) in the year to April, while losses rose 35 per cent to $9.6 million. Of greater future significance, the company, whose development has been helped by contracts from the US Navy, raised $90 million (£45 million) at the equivalent of £10 a share in April on the US Nasdaq market and has signed a £1.6 million contract with Spanish utility Iberdrola for the second phase of constructing a wave power station at Santoña in Spain.

Chief executive officer Dr George Taylor, who is pleased to have recruited ex-PowerGen luminary Mark Draper as chief operating officer, points out that Ocean, whose PowerBuoy technology is based on modular ocean-going buoys, doubled its year-end order backlog to £2.6 million. The company, which also won its first operation and maintenance contract, signed an agreement in the USA to develop a two megawatt demonstration power station with Oregon-based PNGC Power, which wants state permission to build three ‘wave parks’ with a total capacity of up to 250 megawatts.

Ocean was awarded £600,000 by the Scottish Executive to demonstrate its most advanced PowerBuoy system off the Orkney Islands. Since its April year-end, the company has won an £850,000 contract to power deep-water acoustic detection systems for the US Navy.

Thanks to its Nasdaq float, Ocean ended the financial year with $115.9 million (£57.9 million) cash, which should amply ease the pain of its so-far-continuing losses. The volatile shares, which surged from 535p in November to £12.35 in March, are now back at £7, valuing the company at £71.3 million.

More commercial deals, with the prospect of cash and eventual profits, could help perk them up again.