Wednesday January 1st 2020

Electronic Temperature Instruments (ETI) £12m | Templewood £20m | Property.Works £100k | Treatt £88.4m | Zotefoams £57.4m | Hardide £2.1m

News about 6 UK growth companies and/or accelerators + turnover in the GRID marketplace 4th – 10th June 2017:

ELECTRONIC TEMPERATURE INSTRUMENTS (ETI): we tell Lewis when his tyres feel too warm | Laura Onita, The Sunday Times. June 4
DZ profile: Electronic Temperature Instruments Limited
Business: It sells more than 1m thermometers, temperature probes, moisture meters and data logging systems a year in about 130 countries. ….. to measure the temperature in castles and ruins during ghostly investigations. ….. to measure the temperature of roads before tarmac is laid, and to flag up hot spots in grain silos. The tyre maker Pirelli asked ETI for a bespoke Bluetooth device to check temperatures in Formula One tyres. More obvious customers include supermarkets, which have become more alert to temperature monitoring because of stricter food hygiene regulations. The Webbs have two factories, 500 yards apart, where 70% of their goods are designed and manufactured. The rest is made in China.

Exports: Exports make up 55% of Peter and Miriam Webb’s sales
Launched: 1983
Location: Worthing, West Sussex
Founders: Peter, 62, and Miriam Webb
Staff: 160
Financials: posted pre-tax profits of £1.1m on sales of £12m last year.
Investment: The Webbs are sole owners
News: Has just won its third Queen’s Award for Enterprise in recognition of its international trade — exports account for 55% of sales.

TEMPLEWOOD: Soning cleans up in security firm sale | Oliver Shah, The Sunday Times.
DZ profile: Templewood Security Services Limited
Business: cleaning and security sideline business, which cleans car showrooms for HR Owen and stores for Superdry, and provides security to De Beers jewellery shops in London.
Launched: 2003
Location: London NW8
Founder: veteran property agent, Harvey Soning, 72, Chairman.
Financials: turns over about £20m a year.
Investment: Soning has sold a majority stake in to EXCELLERATE, a Johannesburg facilities management company that operates in 14 countries in Africa and the Middle East. Soning will keep a minority stake and remain chairman.
News: Excellerate boss Gordon Hulley said there was scope to sell services to cash-strapped councils, which face the withdrawal of central government funding by 2020. Soning runs the property agency JAMES ANDREW INTERNATIONAL.

PROPERTY.WORKS: Seatwave founder Joe Cohen finds ticket to new era | Joanna Bourke, The Evening Standard. June 5
DZ profile: Stockholm Holdings Limited
Business: an online marketplace for commercial property, where firms across the UK can view potential offices, shops or warehouses that they want to lease, all on one website. If a company wants to a view a property, they are transferred to the agent which listed the property (similar to how Rightmove and Zoopla work with residential sales). Property.Works gets a slice of the fee the agent gets from the tenant if a deal is signed. Users will also pay an annual fee of £2000 or more to list properties.
Launched: 2014
Location: Ilford, Essex
Founder: Joe Cohen, 49-year-old, stocky American digital guru, best-known for founding online ticket giant Seatwave in 2006 before selling it to rival Ticketmaster in 2014. Before Seatwave Cohen ran the international division of Match.com. Using a mix of online ads, posters at Tube stations and working with a number of the capital’s traditional property agents, Property.Works has rapidly grown to host more than 25,000 building listings.
Financials: revenues of £100,000 last year and Cohen expects that to soar to close to £1 million before the end of this year.
Investment: A £1.5 million seed funding round closed last year. …backers include European property investor Meyer Bergman and tech angel PASSION CAPITAL.
News:
1. Cohen also claims it has become the first port of call for many tech start-ups for whom searching online comes far more naturally than picking up the phone to an agent. It’s not just Shoreditch tech though, it has even helped a sex shop open new premises in Basildon.
2. He says a number of big agents, including Cushman & Wakefield, are advertising space on Property.Works because it means they can concentrate on some of their bigger, bonus-making deals.

Small-cap focus: UK chemicals have export opportunities | Michael Pooler, FT. June 10

TREATT
DZ profile: Treatt Plc
Business: Specialty Chemicals. Makes fragrances and flavours for consumer goods industries, with a particular strength in citrus. In addition to the UK, it has operations in the US, China and Kenya.
Launched: 1868
Location: Bury St Edmunds
Financials: Pre-tax profit jumped by more than half to £8.3m in the six months to March 31, on revenue that was up 27 per cent to £51.8m. Year on year - net income £5.99m to 6.15m. Revenues £85.93m to £88.04m.
Investment: listed on Main Market, London Stock Exchange since 1996
News:
1. The company is riding the backlash against sugar added to food and drinks, as manufacturers look for healthier replacements. Booming demand for its sugar reduction products, alongside flavour ingredients for teas, has led to earnings upgrades and fuelled a rally in the stock over the past year.
2. The company is investing to increase its production capacity, including in a new brewing centre allowing customers to recreate specific beer types and flavours.

ZOTEFOAMS
DZ profile: Zotefoams Plc
Business: Specialty Chemicals. A specialist manufacturer of block foam…used in a wide range of sectors including automotive, aviation, packaging, construction and marine. …supplies the material used for insoles for sports shoes made by big brands such as Puma. However …higher growth potential:
1. high-performance foam products, for uses such as insulation in medical clean rooms;
2. a business that licences a manufacturing technology that injects gas bubbles into packaging as it is being extruded, to reduce the amount of material used. An early customer is Dove, which uses the technology when making body wash containers, though sales constitute a small proportion of total revenue.
Launched: 1992
Location: Croydon
Financials: 7 per cent increase in revenue to £57.4m last year; pre-tax profit rose 16.3 per cent to £7m.
Investment: listed on Main Market, London Stock Exchange since 1995

HARDIDE
DZ profile: Hardide Coatings Limited
Business: produces coatings for metal components used in demanding applications. Mainstay of oil and gas.

Launched: 2000
Location: Oxfordshire
Financials: Full-year revenue plunged by almost 30 per cent to £2.14m in the year to 30 September, while pre-tax losses deepened to £1.46m.
Investment: listed on AIM, London Stock Exchange since 2005
News:
1. recently gained approved supplier status from AIRBUS, the European aerospace giant, for the coating of flying components.
2. The crude downturn has weighed on the company, which has a high exposure to exploration drilling. However … sales to the oil and gas sector more than doubled in the first six months of its financial year.