Time To ACT (LSE:TTA), the Aquis-listed specialist engineering group, said its core business generated sales of £1.55m and was meaningfully cash profitable over the three months to August.
The group is combining its Diffusion Alloys and Metal Treatment & Engineering subsidiaries into a new Thermal Processing division, following MTE's acquisition in May.
The division's short-cycle repeat business is running at an annual sales rate of £5m to £6m, a level that alone covers all core group overhead costs on a cash basis, excluding the group's GreenSpur development activity.
Diffusion Alloys' bespoke Project revenues stayed subdued in the period but the division expects to book £1.1m to £1.2m of orders in September, including its first large Project order in some time.
Available liquidity stood at £570,000 at 15 September, after a £68,000 capital investment in MTE equipment expected to pay back within a year.
The Thermal Processing division has been set an FY28 target of £8m in sales at a 40% gross margin, which would leave the core group with a targeted cash pre-tax profit of around £1m after £2.2m of overhead.
"This update hopefully marks the moment in time from which we can shift investor focus from looking in the rear-view mirror to instead looking through the front windscreen at a period of profitable growth and value creation", said Chris Heminway, chief executive and chief strategy officer.
News Intelligence what this means for the company
Time To ACT has swung to cash profitability in its core business and merged two thermal processing units into a single division targeting £8m revenue by FY28. The move matters because the combined division's repeat business alone (£5m–£6m annualized) now covers all group overhead on a cash basis, removing a structural drag; profitability at the division's FY28 target would yield ~£1m cash pre-tax profit for the group after overhead, a material shift from the loss-making posture implied by prior restructuring.
The company has moved from cash burn to cash generation in its core operations, and the Thermal Processing merger creates a self-funding platform for growth. However, liquidity remains tight at £570,000—equivalent to less than one month of the division's current repeat revenue run-rate—so execution risk on the FY28 targets and order pipeline (£1.1m–£1.2m expected in September) is material to whether this inflection holds.
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