Member Info for mulledwine

Banking Facilities and Substantial Transaction Rotala plc is pleased to announce that it has entered into a revised suite of banking facilities with its principal bankers. The new facilities, totalling £11m, replace the Company's existing facilities with that bank of approximately £5.2 million. These enhanced facilities will support Rotala's aim of continuing to grow both organically and by acquisition. Approximately £1.8 million of the facility will immediately be used to finance the acquisition of the freehold interest in a depot presently leased by the group in the Bristol area. This depot, at St. Andrews Road, Avonmouth, BS11 9HS, is being acquired from Silverton Investments Limited for a consideration of £1.8 million.

http://www.investegate.co.uk/rotala-plc-(rol)/rns/acquisition/201212170700066193T/

Sean Finlay, Aurum's Chairman, said: "These are exceptional results from CABTR-006 and reinforce the findings obtained from our earlier trenching work at the permit area. Most importantly they give further encouragement and indication that the permit area has the potential to host a previously unrecognised, near surface gold system. The existence of these wide zones of gold mineralisation containing grades of over 1g/t in surface trenches provides us with a very exciting new exploration target covering a geochemical soil anomaly which extends over a strike length of some 800 metres. The proceeds received from the Company's recent fundraise ensure that aggressive exploration programmes can continue on all the Company's projects. One of the key priorities will be the continuation of the trenching programme at Cabeza to identify further targets for the initial drilling programme at the project."

Cabeza Trenching Results Aurum Mining plc (AIM: AUR), the Spanish focussed gold and tungsten explorer, is pleased to announce further excellent results from its ongoing trenching programme at its Cabeza de Caballo (Cabeza) gold permit area in Salamanca Province. Results received from samples collected in the latest two trenches excavated on an extensive gold-in-soil anomaly have encountered gold mineralisation over two wide zones of high grade. These results follow on from initial trenching that encountered similar gold mineralisation as announced on 23 October 2012. Highlights · Trench CABTR006 encountered two main zones of veining and mineralization (19m and 30m wide respectively). Best intervals within the two mineralised zones include: o First zone: 4 metres grading 8.17 grams per tonne ("g/t"), and 1 metre grading 14.0g/t gold; o Second zone: 1 metre grading 4.72 g/t, 11 metres grading 1.57 g/t and 5 metres grading 1.22g/t gold. If zero gold grade is assigned to the intervals that were not sampled in this zone (total of 13 metres), then this gives an average grade of 0.97g/t gold over the 30 metres. · Trench CABTR006 is located approximately 90 metres south of Trench CABTR004 which returned 21 metres grading 3.71 g/t gold from a similar zone of quartz-sulphide veining. · These trenches are located on a gold-in-soil anomaly which has a strike length of some 800 metres. A map of the trenches and the gold-in-soil anomaly can be accessed by clicking here.

http://www.investegate.co.uk/aurum-mining-plc-(aur)/rns/cabeza-trenching-results/201212170700056103T/

Demand for temporary power in the US following superstorm Sandy is expected to have benefited Aggreko in the wake of a profits alert. While storm-related revenues are not unusual for Aggreko, Seymour Pierce analyst Caroline de La Soujeole said events in the US could provide a 2% boost to pre-tax forecasts for its year end. The Glasgow-based company is due to post a trading update tomorrow. “As Sandy has been described as the largest hurricane in Atlantic storm history, we therefore feel justified to use as a base case scenario the events of 2008 – Hurricane Gustav and Ike – and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which were the last two particularly eventful years for Aggreko,” said the analyst. The group is currently tipped to post full-year pre-tax profits of £364.8 million for 2012, up from £307.1m in 2011, The Scotsman on Sunday says.

Some good figures here but the market will no doubt concentrate on the negative comments in the outlook

CONT Notwithstanding the difficult economic environment, and excluding the impact of the three items mentioned above, we expect both the International Power Projects and Local businesses to grow in 2013. However, this growth will be unlikely to be able to mitigate entirely the reduction of £100 million of revenue and associated margin, and on a reported basis we currently believe that Group performance in 2013 is likely to be slightly lower than in 2012. We are taking a number of steps to respond both to these one-off items and to a temporary weakening in demand in some of our markets. As we stated in October, we are planning to reduce the rate of our fleet investment, and we expect to spend around £150 million on fleet capital investment in the first half of 2013. We will decide on the rate of investment in the second half during the second quarter.

Outlook The work we have done on our Strategy Review confirms that we are the leader in attractive markets which will deliver long-term growth, and we look forward to sharing this analysis with investors in March. However, after a year of strong growth in 2012, the economic environment we will be facing in 2013 is particularly uncertain in many of our markets and it is difficult at this stage to provide a definitive view of the likely pattern of trading in 2013. Also, and as expected, Aggreko will not have the benefit in 2013 of the Olympics to bolster the Local business and the planned reduction in numbers of US troops in Afghanistan will lead to a further reduction in Military revenues. We are also waiting to learn whether our Japanese clients intend to extend their contracts into the second half of 2013. Our current assumption is that revenues from these three items combined will be around £100 million lower in 2013 than in 2012. In the Local business, we expect to see continued underlying growth in 2013, and at this stage we believe that it will deliver another positive year. In the market for International Power Projects, the weakening trend in economic growth in many emerging markets, which we identified in our October statement, has continued; our previous experience suggests that in these circumstances customers may in the short term be under less pressure to secure additional power generation.

Financial position We expect to end the year with net debt of around £620 million, an increase of around £250 million over the prior year, with the main drivers being the acquisition of Poit Energia in April of this year, and higher levels of both capital expenditure and working capital. Fleet capital expenditure in 2012 is expected to be around £420 million, of which about £30 million was related to the London Olympics.

CONT Reported results for the year in the Local business are likely to show revenues around 24% higher and margins up 2 percentage points to 19%. We expect underlying revenues, which excludes the benefit of the London 2012 Olympics contract and the Poit acquisition as well as adjusting for foreign exchange movements, to be around 8% higher in the fourth quarter than in 2011, with growth for the year as a whole expected to be around 12%. Europe and Middle East underlying revenues for the year are expected to be up around 5%, North America up by around 15%, and Aggreko International's Local business up by around 19%. Underlying trading margins for the year as a whole are expected to be slightly higher than the prior year.

Overview Aggreko plc, the world leader in the provision of temporary power and temperature control solutions, is today issuing the following trading update for the year ending 31st December 2012. Trading Reported Group revenues for the year are expected to be in the region of £1.6 billion (up 13%), and profit before tax and amortisation is expected to be around £365 million (up 12%), which is in line with previous guidance; earnings per share are expected to grow by at least 15%. On an underlying basis(1) we expect that Group revenues for 2012 will be around 13% higher than the prior year and trading profits around 7% higher. Underlying revenues in our International Power Projects business, which exclude pass-through fuel and foreign exchange movements, are expected to grow by about 12% in the fourth quarter, with growth for the year as a whole expected to be around 15%. Underlying trading margins in International Power Projects for the year are expected to be about 34%, which is lower than last year principally due to increased bad debt provisions and mobilisation costs on our Mozambique contract. Although all the customers against whose accounts we have taken bad debt provisions have made substantial payments during the second half we continue to expect bad debt provisions to be around $85 million by the year end. Order intake in the fourth quarter has been stronger than in the third quarter, with around 220 MW of new contracts signed to date; major orders include 100 MW in Cote d'Ivoire and 74 MW in Japan. We anticipate that order intake for the year will be over 1,000 MW and we expect to close out the year with around 10% more capacity on-hire than at the end of 2011.

http://www.investegate.co.uk/aggreko-plc-(agk)/rns/trading-update/201212170700126544T/

Commenting on the acquisition, Jonathan Flint, Chief Executive of Oxford Instruments, stated: "The acquisition of Asylum Research significantly increases our footprint in the nanotechnology space and complements our strong position in electron microscopes with a presence in another fundamental nanotechnology measurement technique. The acquisition also gives us access to the rapidly growing bio-nano market as it allows customers to perform analysis of organic samples in their natural liquid environments, something which cannot readily be done using electron microscopes."

The acquisition of Asylum Research is in line with Oxford Instruments' 14 Cubed objectives, to achieve a 14% average compound annual growth rate in revenues and a 14% return on sales by the year ending March 2014. This acquisition contributes to the planned acquisition element of the revenue growth objective. While Asylum Research is expected to deliver less than the 14% targeted margin in this and the next financial year, following the acquisition the 14 Cubed margin target for the Group remains unchanged. As part of Oxford Instruments there will be significant scope to accelerate the inherent strong growth of Asylum Research's end markets and to deliver substantial improvements in margin over time based on increasing scale. Approximately 60% of Asylum Research turnover comes from customers working in the materials science area where the customer base and routes to market are shared with Oxford Instruments. This opens opportunities for market synergies and the development of new integrated products. The remainder of Asylum Research's turnover is in the bio-nano area where SPM instruments are used for research into soft materials, such as DNA. This market provides a new growth opportunity for Oxford Instruments.

Oxford Instruments plc: Acquisition of Asylum Research Corp. Oxford Instruments plc ("Oxford Instruments" or "the Group"), a leading provider of high technology tools and systems for industry and research, announces the acquisition of Asylum Research Corporation ("Asylum Research"), a leading provider of Scanning Probe Microscopes (SPM). The acquisition is subject to customary conditions and is expected to be completed before the end of December 2012. Asylum Research is an established US company based in Santa Barbara, California, with subsidiaries in the UK, Germany and Taiwan. Its SPM technology is used to image and characterise the properties of surfaces and structures down to the atomic scale providing invaluable information to enable development and exploitation at the nanoscale. Its products are used by academic and industrial customers across the world for a wide range of materials and bioscience applications. The combination of Oxford Instruments and Asylum Research strengthens the Group's Nanotechnology Tools sector. SPM is a fundamental nanotechnology measurement technique and complements the existing portfolio of products and technologies within the Group. Asylum Research is being acquired from its management for an initial debt free, cash free consideration of US$32.0 million with a deferred element of up to US$48.0 million payable over three years dependent on its performance over that period. Asylum Research generated Earnings Before Interest and Taxation (EBIT) of $1.1 million in the twelve months to 31 December 2011 from revenue in the same period of $19.6 million. It had gross assets of $6.2 million as at 31 December 2011. The acquisition will be funded from existing facilities.

http://www.investegate.co.uk/oxford-instruments-(oxig)/rns/acquisition/201212170700116368T/

Ronald Duncan, Executive Chairman of @UKsaid: "We are delighted that our fully integrated marketplace has once again been named in all four lots of a national framework, this time for the provision of social care marketplaces. As the first to market with a fully integrated system that has the security to both store patient records and make card payments, our solutions have a significant competitive advantage and therefore we are confident in wining further work in the coming months."

As previously announced, @UK currently has two pilot social care emarketplaces running at Hertfordshire County Council and Peterborough City Council, and believes its position in all four lots of the National Framework should help secure additional projects with further councils. Serco has used the @UK marketplace to deliver its guarantee of 25% savings in social care for Hertfordshire County Council. @UK believes the size of this market opportunity is significant. The Board believes that there are 160 local authorities that need to implement a care marketplace as part of the move to individual budgets by April 2013. The potential earnings range from a care directory at £20,000 to a fully integrated marketplace at £500,000, giving a potential market size of approximately £80 million.

@UK wins place in all four lots of the National Framework for Social Care eMarketplaces @UK PLC (AIM:ATUK.L), the cloud ecommerce marketplace, is pleased to announce that it has been awarded a framework agreement in all four lots of the National Framework for Social Care eMarketplaces, from which local authorities will be able to select suppliers for their Social Care marketplaces. The aim of the National Framework for Social Care eMarketplace is to provide the infrastructure to deliver the Government's personalisation agenda, through an online marketplace which simplifies the complexities of social care purchasing so that individuals can purchase their own care. The @UK system is the only system that is fully integrated into the credit card network and able to store credit card details within the marketplace. This means that it fully meets with the Government's personalisation requirement as individuals using the @UK system will be able to carry out the whole process of social care purchasing, from review and selection of services through to payment. This is important because the target of 100% individual budgets has been reduced by the Government to 70% by April 2013, and the @UK Care Marketplace is believed to be the only system currently available that fully meets the requirements.