Hardide plc (LON:HDD), the provider of advanced surface coating technology, has announced its interim results for the period ended 31 March 2026.
Financial Summary
Six months ended 31 March:
| £m | H1 2026 | H1 2025 | Change |
| Revenue | 4.8 | 2.8 | +2.0 (+71%) |
| Gross margin % | 65% | 54% | + 11 ppts |
| EBITDA | 1.6 | 0.4 | +1.2 (+321%) |
| Operating Profit | 1.3 | – | +1.3 |
| Operating margin % | 26.8% | – | +26.8 ppts |
| Basic earnings per share (p) | 1.6 | (0.1) | +1.7 |
| Cash balance at 31 March | 1.5 | 1.0 | +0.5 |
H1 Trading and Financial Highlights
· Record first half performance, delivering strong revenue growth, significant margin expansion and a material improvement in profitability.
· Revenue increased by 71% to £4.8m (H1 2025: £2.8m), driven by sustained new business momentum, including major contract wins with a leading North American energy customer.
· Strong margin expansion with operating margins of 26.8% and return on capital employed of 45.2% (H1 2025: both Nil), reflecting improved capacity utilisation across the Group and continued operational efficiency gains.
· Positive earnings per share, underpinned by improved profitability.
· Strong cash generation, with cash balances growing to £1.5m at 31 March 2026, despite ongoing investment in working capital to support growth.
Outlook
· H2 revenues will benefit from the recently announced additional £1.8m energy sector order, the new aerospace contract announced in December 2024 going into production, and the first order for industrial turbine blades since 2022.
· Macroeconomic cost pressures continue to be closely monitored and have been largely offset through targeted pricing actions and operational efficiencies, with process gas supplies for the remainder of the year now secured at known costs.
· The Group remains well positioned to deliver full year performance in line with its recently upgraded expectations and is on track to exceed its strategic milestone of doubling revenues from the FY24 baseline ahead of the original timeframe.
Matt Hamblin, Chief Executive, said:
“I am delighted to report a record first half performance, with strong revenue growth and a meaningful improvement in profitability driven by a combination of new contract wins and better capacity utilisation across the Group. This bears testament to the hard work and achievements of the Hardide teams in both the UK and USA.
Order intake and trading momentum remain encouraging as we head into H2 2026, including further orders from our major North American customer, providing good visibility into the second half. With modest working capital requirements and significant existing capacity, the business continues to generate cash and remains well capitalised to support its growth plans. We have taken proactive steps to mitigate volatility in our input costs through a combination of pricing measures and operational efficiencies, alongside securing supply for the remainder of the year.
Looking ahead, the Board remains confident in the Group’s prospects, with a growing pipeline of work, strong customer demand and a scalable operational platform to support further growth.”
Performance Overview
I am pleased to report Hardide delivered a record performance in the first half of 2026.
Revenues increased by 71% to £4.8m on the prior period (H1 2025: £2.8m), driven by numerous new work wins, including from a major new North American customer in the energy sector.
Gross margins improved to 65% (H1 2025: 54%), reflecting higher capacity utilisation across the Group’s US and UK facilities and continued operational efficiencies.
We continued to invest selectively in the team to support growth in North America and the UK, whilst maintaining focused cost discipline, driving a significant increase in EBITDA to £1.6m (H1 2025: £0.4m), enabling the Group to deliver operating profit of £1.3m and positive operating margin expansion to 26.8% (H1 2025: break-even).
Basic earnings per share were 1.6 pence, compared with a loss of 0.1 pence in H1 2025, reflecting the significant improvement in profitability.
The business generated net cash of £0.7m in the period, despite £0.6m of additional investment in working capital to support growth, increasing gross cash balance to £1.5m at 31 March 2026 (30 September 2025: £0.8m).
Commercial and operational review
The Group’s revenues analysed by end use market were as follows:
£m H1 2026 (£m) H1 2025 (£m) % change H1 2026 % total H1 2025 % total Energy 3.1 1.2 144% 64% 44% Industrial 0.9 0.6 66% 19% 20% Aerospace 0.8 1.0 (17%) 17% 36% Total 4.8 2.8 +71% 100% 100% The principal driver of revenue growth was additional orders secured in the energy sector, particularly from the major new customer in North America. Underlying production revenues increased by 25% in the first half, demonstrating continued growth across the core business, excluding the contribution from the new North American customer and prior period aerospace development revenues.
The strong growth in the energy sector was driven by increased demand across the customer portfolio, alongside the new orders from the major new customer.
Industrial revenues increased in absolute terms and remained broadly stable as a proportion of Group revenues, with demand from major customers recovering from softer demand in the earlier part of the prior year.
Aerospace revenues were lower, reflecting the non-repeat of significant development revenues recognised in the prior period in relation to the cargo door coating contract, alongside a later transition of this work into production during the current financial year due to external delays.
Operations
Hardide’s operational teams both in the UK and USA responded very well to the increased activity arising from new business won in the period. Not only were significant increases in output delivered, but efficiency improvements were also realised, including improved reactor loadings and process gas usage.
Planning and design work has been completed to enable the infrastructure at our Martinsville, USA plant to be upgraded, which will enable further operational capacity to be added to support growing demand and maintain efficiency gains. As previously announced, the project is expected to complete later this year at a capital cost of £0.7m.
Technical and Engineering
The focus of work for the technical and engineering teams in the period was on developing solutions demanded by customers and potential customers, including thinner coatings for certain applications. In addition, support was given to the operations teams to achieve improved reactor loadings. Work is ongoing to seek to reduce cycle times and improve relative outputs from investments in new capacity.
Operational Capacity
The upgrade to infrastructure at Martinsville, together with the improvements we are making to operational efficiency, should enable us to increase our operational capacity to around £20m of revenue per annum without significant further investment. Capacity could be further increased by adding coating reactors to our two operational sites. Each coating reactor has a capital cost of circa £1.3m. We are working on and testing design improvements intended to realise significant improvements in the output of future coating reactors, with the aim of improving the ratio of annual revenue to capital cost for each new reactor from 1-2 times to 3-4 times. This should enhance Hardide’s incremental returns on capital over time as the business grows.
Business development
Growth focus remains in two primary areas. Firstly coating as a service, working with customers on existing and new applications in traditional markets. Traction here remains very strong with the production launch of the aerospace cargo door project with at least one additional Hardide coated part number to be added to the project scope in the second half of the financial year. Work with our North American energy sector customer has increased during the first half with order cover extended as previously announced. One additional part number has also been awarded to Hardide with initial production volumes due to commence in the second half. The overall volume of the new part number is significantly less than existing business but it demonstrates growing confidence in our capabilities and strengthens our platform of base business from which to further build. Testing of Hardide continues with our Middle East customers, we anticipate a 3 – 6 months delay based on recent global events but remain positive these opportunities will mature into full production in the fullness of time. In the US, development projects with two additional energy sector customers have matured into low volume repeat production again further strengthening our base load. Finally, we have secured our first development orders in our Additional Services value stream for our electroless nickel plating offering.
The second area of focus is our solutions business, where we work with customers to develop unique chemical vapour deposition (“CVD”) coating solutions for their engineering problems. In this sector we continue to deploy our market pull digital marketing strategy. Over the past six months, we have seen a significant increase in engagement through these activities with the commercial and engineering teams working with customers on technical and commercial qualification. We remain market agnostic, with new opportunities being developed in Industrial and Semi-Conductor sectors with customer testing and evaluation ongoing on a significant number of projects.
