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At an operating level, the loss was £888,000 for the six months to 31 March 2011, up from £392,000 for the same period the previous year.
Aukett Fitzroy Robinson operates primarily from London, Moscow and Abu Dhabi.
The UK accounted for £2.34m of the revenue (2010: £2.75m) with projects moving forward more slowly than anticipated. This resulted in losses of £567,000 against a prior year profit of £617,000, the latter boosted by one-off recoveries on litigation activity.
In Russia, revenues rose strongly to £447,000 (2010: £181,000), reducing the prior year loss of £501,000 to a loss of just £54,000.
Work from continental Europe generated a further £288,000 in revenue, down from £647,000 last time, with an £18,000 loss.
Business was so slow in Abu Dhabi that no significant revenue was generated at all, and a loss of £120,000 was recorded. In the same period last year, Aukett lost £343,000 in the Middle East on revenues of £503,000. With no work on, Aukett has scaled its Abu Dhabi office right back and entered into local partnering agreements to secure new work.
The losses have been funded from cash reserves, without recourse to external refinancing. On 30 September 2010, the firm had £1.33m net cash in the bank. By 31 March 2011 it was £669,000 in the red.
However, chief executive Nicholas Thompson says that work recently won, including the new School of Public Health for Imperial College in London and several hotels in Russia, will make the second half of the year profitable and so help reduce the full year loss.
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