Esken Ltd (LSE:ESKN, OTC:ESKNF) shares fell after it reported annual results, confirmed it has started the process to sell Southend Airport and said it was moving to a cheaper London listing.
The company, which also said the sale of its biomass wood chip business at advanced stage with a preferred bidder, reported a 15% increase in revenue to £120mln and a 10.5% decline in post-tax losses to £25.2mln.
Executive chairman David Shearer said: "Over the last financial year, we secured a successful debt fund raising in difficult market conditions, completed a strategic review of our operating businesses, and are now progressing with our plans to sell our core operating businesses and residual non-core assets through a managed disposal process with a view to returning any remaining value to Esken shareholders."
He said the Renewables arm increased revenues but at lower margins, while the airport benefited from demand recovering post-pandemic, with Southend signing a multi-year partnership with easyJet in January.
"We installed a new, experienced senior management team and the case for the airport remains well founded as demonstrated by the increase in routes served by easyJet," he said.
As it looks to complete the disposals, Esken said it is looking to cut costs, including looking at moving to the Standard segment of London's main market.
"The results were slightly ahead of our forecasts," said house broker Liberum, seeing headwinds from customer outages and adverse waste wood market trends beginning to moderate.
The broker cut its target price to 10p from 15p on "more conservative assumptions".
The shares plunged 24% to 2.8p.