Small caps round-up: James Cropper, ValiRx, ReNeuron

James Cropper, a specialist paper and materials group, has said that pre-execptional profit before tax is set to be in line with market expectations. The company also said its previously announced restructuring process will reduce the size of the UK workforce by eight per cent during the current year and is expected to result in cost savings of around one million pounds each year. The firm added that it will be necessary to make a provision of 0.8m pounds in the financial statement for redundancy payments.

ValiRx, the AIM-listed life sciences firm, has boasted a 157% rise in revenue for 2011, up from £0.177m to £0.455m following a 'signficant' capital injection. During the period the company was in receipt of $1.1m, the procees of the sale of its subsidiary diagnostic development business.

Despite this and a halving of sales costs, the company made a pre-tax loss of £1.1m (2010: £0.1m). The was partly the result of a doubling of admin expenses and a rise in research and development costs. A number of the company's therapeutic products are on the cusp of entering clinical trials, the firm said.

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ReNeuron Group, the Surrey-based stem cell developer, has raised £5.4m through the placing of over 134m shares at 4p per share. In addition the company gave all qualifying shareholders with the opportunity to subscribe, also at 4p per share, for an aggregate of up to 99,744,494 open offer shares, for which the company received acceptance for just under 17.4m. This generated £0.7m.

NR