News

Material technology firm Dyson said its business is performing in line with forecasts and full-year underlying pre-tax profit is expected to come in at £6.5m.

The strategic review of the firm's businesses continues on schedule and it is expected that the conclusions will be announced at the same time as the final results in June.

As previously reported, Saffil is experiencing some softness in the US market. However, the group said the business is holding up well and the order book for 2009 and 2010 is growing.

Restaurant group Clapham House expects full-year results to be in line with expectations and comfortably ahead of those reported the previous year.

"We are confident that our expansion plans for the next financial year are appropriate for current market conditions," said the group.

"Despite our expectation that conditions will remain tough, we plan to continue to grow our business over the next twelve months," it added.

Australian oil explorer Roc said the Dunsborough-2 appraisal well in WA-286-P, offshore Perth Basin, Western Australia, has recovered a second core to surface. The group said both 24 metre cores cut during the last three days had 100% recovery and good oil shows.

"Subject to completing the coring programme, drilling to Total Depth and running a full suite of logs, including wireline sampling, this latest well appears to point to a potentially significant gross hydrocarbon column both at the Dunsborough-2 well and for the field as a whole," it said.

Oilfield services group Sovereign Oilfield is on the up after a former employee agreed to buy out his contract with the company for £250,000.

Simon Fraser, formerly an employee of Sovereign subsidiary Maxwell Downhole Technology, is to meet the cost of his contract buy-out by transferring 454,456 of his shares back to Sovereign.

The repurchased shares will either be cancelled or held as treasury shares where they will not be liable to receive dividends and will not carry voting rights.

If the share repurchase is approved by shareholders the reduction in the number of shares in issue will result in the shareholdings of company founders Graham Burgess and Dr Peter Felter increasing to 29.8% and 28.6% respectively.

Hydrogen fuel cell group ITM Power has signed a collaboration agreement with Roush Technologies Limited to develop hydrogen-powered, emission-free vehicles on UK roads.

Roush Technologies will be responsible for both adapting existing internal combustion-engines in vehicles and researching the development of new power units to utilise hydrogen fuel. ITM will provide the breakthrough refuelling solution by enabling vehicle operators to generate their own hydrogen fuel.

Hampden Underwriting, which provides investors with a limited liability direct investment into the Lloyd's insurance market, posted a maiden profit of £89,000 in the five months August to December 2007.

The firm's adviser, Hampden Agencies Limited, continues to believe that syndicates supported by Hampden have sufficiently well rated businesses to produce a good return although, as ever, profitability is vulnerable to major catastrophe losses which the industry did not suffer from in 2006 and 2007.

Strong momentum at the end of the year helped scientific instruments group Judges Capital more than triple profits last year, with the year end order book also doubled.

Pre-tax profits in 2007 surged to £858,000, from £281,000, on revenues of £6.2m, up from £5.2m. Profits were boosted by a £142,000 disposal gain. "All our operations traded strongly during the year and achieved increases in sales and EBIT. Activity proved particularly buoyant towards the end of the year," Judges said. The dividend for the year rises by 10% to 3.3p.