Hardide is the provider of a surface engineering technology that floated on AIM with a £1.4m funding earlier this year. Its unique tungsten carbide technology is far more corrosive-resistant than traditional technologies, improving the life of components and optimising performance across a range of industries, including oil and gas, valves, pumps, and aerospace.

Hardide already has approved supplier status with BAE Systems, has completed first orders to coat components for the Typhoon, the Eurofighter, and talks are afoot with other leading aircraft manufacturers, including a mystery blue chip aerospace and engineering giant.

Maiden pro-forma figures to September – covering 12 months of trading for the group’s subsidiary Hardide Coatings – revealed a three-fold leap in revenues to £1.1m (£331,000), and pared losses of £701,000 (£1m), as more business was won with existing customers in the UK and Europe, new clients were brought on board and Hardide expanded into the US. Sales more than trebled in the oil and gas and valve and pump sectors, and revenues more than doubled in the US, where Hardide has a Texas sales office up and running to tap into the oil and gas arena.

For the current year, analyst Alan Matthews of shop broker Seymour Pierce envisages a move to pre-tax profits of £500,000 on revenues of £2.9m, yielding earnings of 0.4p and placing the shares on a pricey forward multiple of 31 times. Jim Murray-Smith, chief executive, insists Hardide sits 'poised on the edge of major breakthroughs in two immense global markets, oil and gas and aerospace’. If he is right, the shares might merit the rating. Speculative buy.

Hardide	AIM	£3.57m	1.88p	0.00p
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