Versarien Plc (LON:VRS), the advanced engineering materials group, has announced its unaudited results for the year ended 31 March 2021.
Operational highlights
● Acquisition of chemical vapour deposition graphene assets and IP from Hanwha Aerospace Company Limited, South Korea, for a consideration of 11 million ordinary shares in Versarien valued at £4.34 million
● Awarded £5 million Innovate UK loan with £2.26 million received during the year for the Company’s GSCALE project (an acronym for Graphene, Seat, Concrete, Arch, Leisure, Elastomer)
● Awarded a £1.95 million development agreement by the Defence, Science and Technology Laboratory (“DSTL”), a part of the Ministry of Defence
● Award of EU Grant of €357,000 to Gnanomat for scale-up and development of electrode materials
● Launch of graphene enhanced protective face masks utilising PolygreneTM, Versarien’s graphene enhanced polymer
● Project completed with Rolls Royce and the Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre to understand and create technological advances in the aerospace sector utilising chemical vapour deposition (CVD) graphene and other 2D materials
● Formation of the Versarien Graphene Advisory Panel (“VGAP”)
● Board strengthened by the appointment of James Stewart CBE as the Company’s new independent Non-executive Chairman
● Appointment of Dr. Stephen Hodge to the Company’s Board as Chief Technology Officer
Financial highlights
● Group revenues of £6.6 million (2020: £8.3 million)
● Adjusted LBITDA* of £1.8 million (2020: £1.6 million)
● Reported loss before tax of £8.1 million (2020: £4.7 million) after a non-cash share based payments charge in the year of £1.2 million (2020: £1.2 million) and a non-cash £3.3 million charge arising from a reduction in the IFRS 13 valuation of the Lanstead Sharing Agreement (2020: £1.0 million gain)
● Cash at 31 March 2021 of £2.4 million (31 March 2020: £1.7 million)
● Issue of 8.75 million ordinary shares re-invested into an 18-month sharing agreement with Lanstead Capital Investors LP (“Lanstead”), a US headquartered institutional investor
● Net assets of £16.5 million at 31 March 2021 (31 March 2020: £15.7 million)
*Adjusted LBITDA (Loss before, interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) excludes exceptional items, other gains/losses and share based payment charges
Post Period highlights
● £1.93 million strategic investment in Versarien by Graphene Lab Limited including 5% royalty agreement and 2% trademark agreement on sales
● Acquisition of Spanish graphene manufacturing assets to provide up to an additional 100 tonne powder capacity per annum
● Orders placed for the purchase of ink scale up equipment to give up to an additional 12,000 litres of ink capacity per annum
● Lease signed on new dedicated graphene production facility in Longhope, Gloucestershire
● Textile supply agreement signed with Crosslete and discussions ongoing with multiple garment suppliers
● Agreement signed with one of the world’s largest packaging companies to evaluate graphene-based coatings
Commenting, Neill Ricketts, Chief Executive Officer of Versarien, said:
“Despite the challenges arising from the pandemic, which not unexpectedly impacted our mature businesses, we have continued to focus on the commercialisation of our graphene technologies and in particular through the GSCALE project. I am pleased to report that the manufacturing scale up is advancing in tandem with the progress on commercialisation of the project’s applications.
Highlights include the development and supply agreements for textiles and the number of infrastructure opportunities following the successful pourings of graphene enhanced concrete. In addition, we are working with multiple industrial partners to develop composite structures for automotive, aerospace, defence and rail. We have also demonstrated 40% improvement in concrete strength, 30% increase in tyre rubber stiffness and have applied to trademark GrapheneWearTM as part of the textile commercialisation. With this we continue to pursue our strategy of global positioning to ensure that our products can be supplied to multiple sectors in multiple markets.”
