Advanced Braking Technology (ASX:ABV) says sales are steady, costs are coming down, and margins are up — but is yet to provide its long suffering shareholders with any numbers.

The company sells brakes.

One, the Failsafe, is very popular and sells for $11,000 a set, while the other Terra Dura brake has been under testing and redevelopment for years.

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Today the company said February to May was good: sales of Failsafe brakes weren’t record breaking but steady and it expects they will be supplemented by orders from Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO) for its Oyu Tolgoi mine in Mongolia and the WestConnex civil construction project in NSW.

Savings of $800,000 for this year are beginning to make themselves felt on the balance sheet and ABV says cash burn has slowed.

But the company has provided no numbers to back these comments, telling investors to wait for the next quarterly report.

The Terra Dura curse

The Terra Dura brake has plagued ABV for years and it’s unclear its got any commercial sales away yet.

ABV listed in 2002 and its patented industrial SIBS — since rebranded as Failsafe — brakes have been the backbone of sales for years.

But in 2016 the company started buying the Terra Dura brand as a way into the consumer off-road market.

All seemed to be going well, with a few delays in testing, and ABV expected to start selling products in the first six months of 2017 as the orders began to roll in.

But by June the scale of problems began to become clear. The latest redesign was only completed this month and ABV is still tinkering with a new metal cover design.

Last year the company delivered 50 sets of Terra Dura brakes for paid trials and today said sales had started to mining industry customers, but offered no more information.

Last week sales director Geoff Lewis said “forecast demand” was strong and his team was “ready to immediately meet this demand”.

After posting a worse result for the six months to December 31, 2018, compared to the prior corresponding quarter, investors are now looking for a solid bank of numbers to prove the company really has turned a corner after years of up and down cash receipts and cash burn caused by the ongoing Terra Dura drama.

In other ASX tech news today:

Titomic (ASX:TTT) has added another prototype, this time a hardened metal extrusion screw for German company C.A.PICARD Group.

Titomic makes 3D printer metal parts and has deals with outfits like Boeing and defence contractor TAUV. This one will pay $US25,965 for a prototype screw.

And indoor skydive company ISA Group (ASX:IDZ) is selling off its Perth centre to SkyVenture International for $500,000 cash, the latter assuming $250,000 of pre-sold and unused flight liabilities, and the settlement of $US3.8m in promissory notes owed as part of a lawsuit settled last year.

SkyVenture International alleged that as part of a deal for Indoor Skydive to use its systems, the Australian company promised not to directly compete or use other suppliers.

An arbitrator in September last year agreed, and ISA agreed to pay $US3.8m to settle the dispute. But recognising that ISA Group was a “valuable partner” SkyVenture loaned them all of the cash with which to pay.

ISA still has two centres in Penrith and on the Gold Coast.

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