Tees firms bucking trend
Jun 15 2009 by Sue Scott, Evening Gazette
TEES Valley AIM-listed firms have outperformed the London Stock Exchange despite seeing the value of their shares fall by more than 20%.
The FTSE AIM All-Share index has slumped by more than 45% since last year amid rising concerns over a deep and prolonged recession. But Stockton monitoring equipment firm Brulines, business advisors Vantis, and Hartlepool electronics firm Stadium Group have all seen their share prices fall by less than this amount - the first two by under 30%.
Middlesbrough renewables specialist Helius Energy bucked the trend, its share price rising almost 56% since last June. But the annual performance masks a sharp decrease from 36.5p in September to 16p less than three months later.
Brulines CEO James Dickson said robust companies that operated in recession-hit sectors could see their share price fall through no fault of their own.
The company, which last week announced a 19.6% rise in profits, provides equipment to around 23,000 pubs to help them monitor the quality of a pint of beer.
He said: “Every time there’s a bad news story about the pub sector we tend to go down a few pennies. We tend not to get sucked back up again when the market bounces back.”
AIM has been criticised for attracting low-quality firms which have de-listed within months and depressed its overall value - resulting in apparently healthy companies having a relatively low share price. On March 4 Stadium Group announced a 5% rise in pre-tax profits to £2.78m, roughly in line with analysts expectations - but then saw its share price lose more than a quarter of its value by the end of the month.
Anthony Platts, divisional director at investment manager Brewin Dolphin’s Teesside’s office, said heavily indebted firms were more vulnerable to falls in their share price.
An AIM listing can accelerate growth by enabling firms to raise additional capital. Helius Energy raised just over £2m in its float on AIM in January 2007 to kick-start plans to build three biomass plants in the UK.
