Losses at Hardide, the industrial coatings group, widened on lower than expected sales last year, though chief executive Jim Murray-Smith remains upbeat, insisting a factory opening in Houston, Texas, underscores the group’s growth prospects.

Pre-tax losses of £1 million (£481,000) for the year to September reflected a July profit warning caused by customer-related timing issues. One key oil and gas client reduced its inventory levels last year, which pegged back sales, although Oxfordshire-based Hardide remains this mystery group’s specified supplier and orders have returned to earlier levels.

Oil price strength also distracted major energy customers away from field-testing Hardide’s technology, choosing instead to focus on maintaining high production levels. This held-up customer ‘conversion time’ for Hardide’s coatings, though Murray-Smith insists these field-tests are posting great results and ‘the majority of customers’ then go on to incorporate the group’s technology.

Though lower than originally predicted, turnover burgeoned 73 per cent higher to £1.89 million thanks to increased interest in Hardide’s coatings across the oil and gas, valves, pumps and aerospace sectors.

Murray-Smith claims the recent opening of a manufacturing facility in Houston, ‘the energy capital of the world’, has stirred further interest in the group’s technology. A backlog of interest from ‘the top-tier Houston-based energy services companies’, as well as aerospace players, has mounted, and existing American customers are ramping up order levels now that the plant is up and running.

The 9.5p shares, which have fallen from a 52-week high of 17p, value Hardide at just shy of £14 million. That looks cheap, and the shares have speculative appeal.

Hardide	AIM	£3.57m	1.88p	0.00p
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