News blog

Surgical Innovations

• BY: Andrew Hore |
• POSTED: 06/11/2014 |

Mike Thornton is resigning as finance director of surgical instruments developer and manufacturer Surgical Innovations. 

Thornton will serve out his nine month notice period unless his departure is mutually agreed – he was also chief executive of the main subsidiary. This will give the company enough time to find a replacement. 

Chief executive Graham Bowland left at the end of September and non-executives Colin Glass and Ray Simkins followed him the following month. Chris Rea, founder of AES Engineering, is interim managing director. He subscribed for an 8.9% stake at 4p a share.

In the first half of 2014, revenues slumped from £3.88m to £1.77m and this meant that a profit of £567,000 was turned into a £3.23m loss – including £2.61m of exceptional charges relating to write-downs and £420,000 of costs relating to a proposed new manufacturing and training facility which may not go ahead. Net debt was £2.36m at the end of June 2014.

Since then, another £1.6m of write-downs of rebates to overseas distributors and redundancy costs has been announced. Revenues will also be reduced by £600,000 this year because they were recognised too early.

There will be a large loss this year and Surgical Innovations needs to be careful with its cash.

At 1.38p a share, Surgical Innovations is valued at £6.13m.

Download the latest AIM Journal from http://www.hubinvest.com/AIMPDFOctober2014_61.pdf