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Shares in a supplier to the likes of Aston Martin and McLaren have fallen sharply after it revealed "disappointing" financial results for 2021.

Liverpool-headquartered Surface Transforms, which manufactures ceramic brake discs for supercars, has revealed its revenue for the last 12 months will be below £3m, "despite considerable growth against prior year".

In a statement to the London Stock Exchange, the company said the shortfall was mainly the result of delays in the final commissioning of the upscaled production capacity at Knowsley and the associated start of the anticipated upscaling of commercial revenues expected from December.

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The firm's shares slumped by more than 25% in early trading, recovering to be down about 15% as of 8.30am.

Surface Transforms' statement added: "Whilst this capacity programme progressed considerably during the year, a series of minor startup challenges has caused output delay, resulted in Q4 output missing target.

"By December, these issues have been narrowed down to an issue with one particularly complex furnace, which the board believe will be fully resolved imminently. Given December is a short month, the company is unlikely now to recover the sales gap in this financial year.

"It is important to note that these sales have not been lost, the key OEM customers have not seen any impact and the revenue gap, whilst proportionately large in 2021, is small in relation to overall 2022 volumes and is expected to be recovered progressively through Q1 and Q2 2022.

"The board recognise that the short-term effect of this is disappointing, but as noted above, believe these operational issues will all be satisfactorily resolved in short order.

"Accordingly, the board intend to provide a further operations update in January 2022 and also to provide quarterly updates for a period of time to reassure the market in respect of revenue performance alignment with future market expectations."

Chairman David Bundred said: "This announcement summarises the broad position of Surface Transforms over the last three months of 2021.

"Excellent progress continues to be made on the strategic plan but with work still to do on getting the new Knowsley manufacturing plant to the required daily volume all day, every day.

"It has been a tough period for all the team, but they have progressively dealt with every issue with their usually tenacity and commitment.

"We are confident that we are almost through this transformational period and, underpinned by the encouraging news from OEM 8, and other expected contract awards, are looking forward to 2022 with real confidence."