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Bad days are behind Hartest

• FROM: July 2006 |
• TAGS: industrial engineering, hartest |
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• Bad days are behind Hartest
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Instrumentation and medical equipment supplier Hartest hopes to have put most of its problems behind it last year. It has written off old stock and a loan to a former subsidiary that is in receivership. Although this led to Hartest reporting a loss he
underlying profit more than doubled.

Adjusted profits increased from £317,000 to £709,000 on turnover 7% higher at £19.6m in the 12 months to March 2006.

The four main instrument businesses have merged into one company called Hartest Precision. The benefits of this and a new sales and marketing director should start to show through this year. The medical division is doing well and recently secured a £249,000 order for Swissray xray equipment.

A £3.1m net fund raising cut net debt to £1.5m which is manageable for the group and in its current form it will be able to reduce this over time. Chief executive Geoff Spink believes reinstating a dividend is an important signal. Hartest is paying a final of 0.1p a share. This could double this year giving a prospective yield of 3%. Based on Corporate Synergy’s forecast profit of £950,000 Hartest is trading on less than nine times forward earnings which is not high for a company that now has a firm base.