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Haydale CEO quits alongside profit warning
Advanced materials group Haydale Graphene Industries warned investors on Wednesday that revenues and losses for its current trading year were set to fall below expectations as a result of timing issues with several contracts.
Despite Haydale's consolidated revenues being expected to rise 15-20% above the £3m generated by the group in 2017, this figure was still lower than expected, meaning the firm's pre-tax loss was now projected to come in below expectations, but "broadly in line with last year".
AIM-quoted Haydale said it had made "significant progress" during the year, however, the Ammanford-based firm stated it was "difficult to predict" the rate at which its technologies would gain commercial traction at scale.
The group said it had "suffered in the second half" from a combination of timing differences of recognising revenue before the financial year end, longer than anticipated lead times by customers to reach commercial volumes and, to a lesser extent, by unfavourable currency movements.
Haydale also announced that chief executive Ray Gibbs had decided to step down from the role and transition into a business development position after the firm had found a successor.
David Banks, chairman of Haydale, said, "Whilst the group has made strong operational progress in H2-2018, it has been disappointing in terms of the group's sales, especially the longer than expected lead times for adoption by our customers of our graphene and SiC products.
"We remain confident, however, that this is primarily a timing issue and that many of these expected forecast sales should now be recognised in FY-2019."
As of 1040 BST, Haydale shares had tumbled 17.62% to 79.50p.