Small caps round-up: Pipehawk, Maxima Holdings, Low Carbon Accel

Electronic systems development firm Pipehawk rose 2.6 per cent after it said the second half of the year had showed a great improvement over the first and the firm had managed to turn a half year loss into a full year profit.

Revenues were £3.34m in the year to the end of June, with a profit after taxation coming in at £28,000.

Maxima Holdings, the IT business systems and managed services company, announced a strong start to its new financial year, having secured new contracts totalling £2m since June. Managing Director Fraser Fisher said the recent wins demonstrated the firm's turnaround strategy - focusing on its core IT managed services offerings such as secure application and infrastructure management, cloud and virtualisation - was working.

Low Carbon Accel plunged 17.5% after it said the sale of its assets was taking longer than expected and discussions were on-going with several interested parties. The firm said the total value under consideration was broadly in line with the current market capitalisation of LCA. But it warned there could be no guarantee that discussions would conclude in a sale of the assets "at or close to the current market capitalisation of the company".

Ilika, which develops new materials for the energy, electronics and biomedical sectors, said it expects total revenue for the year ending 30th April 2013 to show around 20% year-on-year growth on continuing activities. It said discussions with customers, which had moved relatively slowly over the summer, were maturing into firm contracts. The firm now expects these will contribute to higher levels of revenue in the second half.

Pure Wafer, which provides silicon wafer reclaim services, saw its shares hurtle south after it announced a share issue to raise up to £4.49m. The 22.5% drop was down to shares being offered at 3.5p - a discount of 30% against the mid-market price of 5p per share at which the shares were quoted on AIM at close of trading on 19th October. The firm said the money would allow it to significantly decrease its debt while improving its balance sheet and cash position.

Acta S.p.A., the clean energy products company, rose strongly after it received the first two orders for its 1m3/hour hydrogen generator stack. The company believes that these sales of its biggest stack, and the subsequent customer evaluations, would offer important technical and commercial validation of its "breakthrough technology" and could give rise to "significant commercial opportunities". The firm's shares rose 7% on the news.

Software design company Cyan Holdings said its electricity metering system CyLec had been successfully demonstrated to the Indian Tamil Nadu Electricity Board. The firm said it remained confident of its competitive position on the tender. It's shares rose 7.3% on the news.

MM