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Antrim is an unusual beast. It's a combination of a high-impact, high-risk, exploration play in the North Sea - and one that has just had a big success there - [...]

times are grim for St Ives. According to chairman Miles Emely: 'Trading conditions remain extremely challenging.' The printer faces pricing pressure in most of its markets, and visibility on the [...]

Proactis joined Aim via a placing at 43p in June 2006. Its software enables companies to streamline, control and monitor all internal and external expenditure, apart from payroll functions. But [...]

Emerald's sales rose as it produced more oil and sold it for better prices. However, failed exploration wells in Colombia and Syria took the shine off that and pre-tax profits [...]

EBT Mobile China aims to become the chinese equivalent of Carphone Warehouse, by serving the booming mobile-phone retail market through its network of 233 stores in eastern China. And, so [...]

North Midland is celebrating its 60th birthday with record sales and profits - and has a workload worth GBP140m being carried forward. So the 21 per cent jump in the [...]

In November 2006, Medical Solutions (MS) disposed of its Dubai operations for GBP13.2m in cash after costs. It acquired them in 2003 as part of a pathology acquisition and they [...]

Qualceram's shares have held up well, despite the company not paying a 2006 dividend. This was a controversial decision as last year's profits benefited from rationalisation moves taken in 2005 [...]

Armour's strong sales growth was helped by a full six-month contribution from its Alphason subsidiary, which manufactures audio, video and plasma television supports. But even without this, organic revenue growth [...]

The global semi-conductor glut that plagued the industry in the second half of 2006 is clearing faster than expected, according to market research group iSuppli. However, stockpiles have been reduced [...]

253p - Aim - The flood of private-equity and institutional money into alternative property asset classes, such as hotels and nursing homes, has played straight into the hands of Christie [...]

Tissue Science Laboratories' (TSL) increased net loss was in line with management guidance and was largely put down to the company's strategy of reducing its reliance on marketing partners in [...]

It's all change at Quantica. In October 2006, the company sold its healthcare recruitment business for £4.5m in cash and, in December, disposed of its National Vocational Qualifications (NVQ) training [...]

In the brave new multimedia world, armies and police forces are beginning to want the sort of high-tech telecoms kit that the big TV broadcasters use, so Vislink is chasing [...]

Sub-prime lender S&U has managed to reverse a slowdown in its first-half profits. In motor finance, consumer credit for used-car sales dropped by 6 per cent, but profits in this [...]

Scottish speciality pharmaceuticals provider ProStrakan thinks that each of its new products could eventually generate sales of more than $100m a year. These new drugs are edging closer to the [...]

SCI Entertainment prefers to launch its computer games in the spring to avoid the crowded shelves of the Christmas period. So, while losses in this period fell on better sales, [...]

iPoint-Media came to the Alternative Investment Market (Aim) through a reverse takeover last September at 14p, and the shares have more than doubled since then. The key customer for its [...]

Premier Direct had a horrible 2006, but these first-half results, in which the group returned to profit after losses in the second half of last year, suggest that it might [...]

Laura Ashley looks all dressed up with somewhere to go, after posting a rise in like-for-like sales of 8.2 per cent. Finance director David Cook says: 'People who haven't seen [...]

US industry is still going strong. Despite a weak dollar, and the fact that part of the US housing market is close to repossession, recent economic figures have been good. [...]

After a loss in 2004 and a turnaround in 2005, cost-cutting boosted Portmeirion's 2006 results. In fact, despite significant increases in energy costs, savings last year were close to GBP1m [...]

Tepnel has reported its first profit - and rising sales should increase that figure over the next few years. The company has two divisions. One is Research Products, which provides [...]

Alliance Pharma's 2006 results are quite respectable. Over the two trading periods, operating profits increased from GBP2.17m to GBP2.6m, and broker Numis forecasts doubled 2007 pre-tax profits of GBP1m on [...]

Bioquell proves that IT pays to be flexible in business. The bio-decontamination specialist has finally moved into meaningful profits after years of trying to sell its superbug-eradication system into NHS [...]

Hikma has delivered genuine Eastern promise since joining the main market in 2005. The Jordan-based generic drug company grew revenues by more than 20 per cent for the full year [...]

Standard Life celebrated its maiden preliminary results since demutualisation with a 55 per cent rise in operating profits, to GBP614m, on a European embedded-value (EEV) basis. The rise was driven [...]

The worse may now be over for Johnson Service shares -they're up 15 per cent since the release of these results, although still down one-third from a year ago. This [...]

AG Barr, the maker of Irn-Bru, admits it faces 'structural changes' in the UK soft drinks market, but it's taking positive steps to address them. As a result, the group [...]

'We are growing fast,' says Sinclair Pharma's chief executive, Michael Flynn. Certainly, revenue growth at the speciality pharmaceuticals provider was impressive, driven by strong sales of dermatitis treatment Atopiclair, which [...]

Last year's new business sales at Personal were not as strong as in the previous year. Chairman Christopher Johnston puts that down to a relative lack of new opportunities. Although [...]

All of the growth at Churchill China's core hospitality business came in the second half of the year and, according to management, trading so far this year has been encouraging. [...]

Kesa reported that like-for-like sales had risen by a robust 7.8 per cent in the period, driven by demand for flat-panel televisions, laptop computers and white goods (such as fridges). [...]

Road traffic information provider ITIS has sold its stolen vehicle tracking business NavTrak to Italian automotive security group Cobra. ITIS will receive GBP2.2m with an additional payment of up to [...]

like printing companies (see Litho supplies above), builders' merchants such as Gibbs & Dandy are in a sector that isn't benefiting from UK economic growth. That may initially appear surprising, [...]

Maintel has two businesses. the first is Maintel Europe, which manages telephone systems for customers with between 20 and 2,000 telephone extensions. It employs 100 maintenance engineers and, last year, [...]

A buoyant commercial property market helped boost Headlam's like-for-like sales in the UK by 4.1 per cent, while a particularly strong performance in the Netherlands drove an underlying sales rise [...]

Zenergy is one of the first companies to develop a new kind of high-temperature superconductor (HTS), described as the 'fibre optics of electrical power'. It has found a way of [...]

Friends Provident pushed new life and pensions business ahead by 42 per cent in the period, but the shares fell 6 per cent as investors digested the life assurers' rather [...]

AMS' chief executive, Don Evans, is celebrating the fact that the company has sustained profitability for a second year, after making a modest profit in 2005. He admits there was [...]

Once again, Gyrus has taken on the dollar and won. Trading at the surgical devices manufacturer was hit by currency fluctuations, but it still managed a robust performance, with operating [...]

Finance director Roy Naismith hasn't been the happiest of men in the past couple of years, but that's now beginning to change. 'I probably feel a little more optimistic,' he [...]

Releasing its results as the markets took another sharp turn downwards, Dealogic was typically cautious in its outlook. The investment-banking software provider's revenues are split between steady subscriptions and fees [...]

Charter's shares shot up 10 per cent on these results, buoyed by a recovery programme that's bang on track and the board's decision to restart paying dividends. The group's industrial [...]

CODA produces best-in-class accounting software aimed at a limited number of industries in which it has expertise, including finance and retail. And, in this maiden set of full-year results since [...]

The decision by electronics and industrial components distributor Premier Farnell to focus its business on the electronic design engineer sector (EDE) is starting to pay off, as is an increased [...]

three acquisitions, several new technology partners and the disposal of a low-margin distribution business transformed Horizon in 2006. And this was recognised by a 10 per cent leap in the [...]

Executive chairman John Nichols admits that Nichols' dispensing division had 'a disappointing year'. Indeed, operating profit there reached just GBP300,000. But the company has sold the Balmoral hot-beverages business and [...]

38p - Technology hardware - Plasmon's investors have become accustomed to disappointment. The company spent four years and GBP25m developing its ultra-dense optical (UDO) storage system, which enables customers to [...]

193p - Aim - Chieftain's recent performance, both in terms of its operating results and its share price performance, is proof that a company doesn't need new technology to provide [...]