Pursuit Dynamics is one of those companies which attracts a great deal of attention from private investors.
But the attention its latest pronouncement has brought is not the sort it would want.
The company - whose technologies are used by major brewing, food and consumer companies to save energy and speed up processes - has issued a litany of bad news. Its annual losses rose from £8.7m to £15.3m, its chief executive Roel Pieper has resigned with immediate effect (apparently to return to his venture capital activities) and it has made an emergency cash call.
It plans to raise £9.4m with a one for eight rights issue at 100p a share. That was a 51% discount to Wednesday's closing price, and in the market its shares have slumped by 100.75p to 102.5p. The cash will be used to provide further funding for its technology portfolio.
As for the results, it said it made revenues of £490,000 for the year and, somewhat heroically surely, forecasts £22m of revenues next year. It said revenues generated from its industrial customers had been slower to emerge than it expected but
this is a timing issue and the delay means that income we expected in the 2010/11 fiscal year should instead be recognised in the coming year.
In particular an agreement with Procter & Gamble has been extended by a month to allow the consumer giant more time to evaluate Pursuit's technology. This is expected to conclude in the first quarter of 2012 and could lead to commercial discussions about a fee for P&G to licence the technology. Many a slip, however....
