Companies: OPT   

Investors looking for a green energy play bearing inherent risks, yet with the potential for huge rewards, might reinvestigate New Jersey-based Ocean Power Technologies (OPT).

Led by co-founder and chief executive George Taylor, the company has suffered one or two setbacks since listing on AIM in 2003 and remains loss-making. However, revenues are building as it commercialises its proprietary ‘PowerBuoy’ systems, able to generate electricity by harnessing the renewable energy of ocean waves. The ocean-going buoys on which the systems are based have withstood winter storms and one hurricane.

As Taylor points out, one of the key advantages of wave power is that it ‘harnesses the very concentrated and predictable energy of oceans’, as opposed to less predictable alternative energy sources such as wind and solar. OPT projects underway include a contract with electric cooperative PNGC Power for Oregon, the long-established contract with the US Navy in Hawaii and also a project in Europe with Spanish utility giant Iberdrola. An OPT wave farm is also being connected to the infrastructure of a Wave Hub project in Cornwall, and OPT has signed a joint development deal with Australian energy supplier Griffin, for the construction of a wave power station off the coast of Western Australia.

OPT financials for the nine months to January offered encouragement in terms of top-line growth, with revenues rising more than 140% to $3.7m (£1.9m), although the net loss widened to $8.3m (2007: $5.5m). At balance sheet date, the coffers were flush with $106m cash, buoyed by a $90m funding in April 2007, effected via a listing on Nasdaq, which leaves the company liquid and one for the long term.

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Ocean Power Technologies	AIM	£31.16m	305.00p	2.50p
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