Shares of Glasgow-based Smart Metering Systems (SMS) fell about 17% on Tuesday after it said it reported a pretax loss of £1.7 million for the six months to June 30 compared to a profit of £10.1 million the year before.

The firm revealed it is in talks about a sale of a “minority of our meter asset portfolio” which if completed at an appropriate value “would provide significant additional liquidity and demonstrate the inherent value of our substantial asset base.”

SMS first-half revenue grew 16% to £54.2 million.

SMS, which employs 1,200 people across the UK, also announced the promotion of Tim Mortlock to chief operating officer, a newly created position. 

Mortlock, 42, has been employed within the SMS Group for 20 years, most recently as managing drector of the company’s meter assets and energy services division. 

Smart Metering Systems CEO Alan Foy said: “We have continued to grow our annualised recurring revenue, our key financial metric, ahead of expectations and now have over 3.46 million metering and data assets under management of which over 1 million are smart.  

“The widely reported industry-wide installation issues are now substantially addressed and the mass rollout of SMETS2 can now commence – this is expected to result in a pick up in the installation run-rate both in the latter part of 2019 and into 2020.

“With over 500 engineers and significant cash and debt facilities, we have the engineering and financial resources to handle our order book of approximately 2 million meter installations with headroom for further growth.

“We are in discussions about a sale of a minority of our meter asset portfolio, which, if completed at an appropriate value, would provide significant additional liquidity and demonstrate the inherent value of our substantial asset base.”