CRA.L Share News (CRA)

Corac Group's shares plunged Tuesday as the engineering company revealed it widened its pre-tax losses in 2012.Loss before tax came to £6.1m, a 7.0% increase from £5.7m in 2011, reflecting the costs of acquiring two companies, opening a new technology centre in Slough and investments in the business process to meet quality standards.Nevertheless, group revenue rose £15.3m from the previous year's £0.3m and the order book stood at £14.4m, compared to £07m a year earlier. "This has been a year of great achievement and transformation for Corac," said Chairman Phil Cartmell."We have expanded the group through successful acquisition and opened a new purpose-designed facility to support our engineering and delivery activities."The company purchased Wellman Defence and Wellman Hunt Graham for £10.9m from the Wellman Group, a group of manufacturing companies that make boilers and advanced defence equipment. The two businesses were renamed Atmosphere Control International (ACI) and Hunt Graham.Corac, which serves oil and gas, defence and industrial markets, spent £3.2m on research and development, about £0.2m less than the year before.Adjusted group earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) loss - before share based payment and exceptional items - was reduced to £4.1m from £5.2m on the back of revenue from ACI and Hunt Graham.The group had £6.7m net cash at year end compared to £15.3m the prior year."A stronger group with a collection of mature and maturing technologies and enhanced routes to market is yielding increasing interest from ever wider markets," Cartmell added. "We will continue to deliver high value propositions to our customers with increasingly positive results from these in 2013."RD