Shares in Scottish telecoms and Internet outfit - Thus - rose a tad in early trading amid news of increased turnover and narrowing losses.

Announcing Q1 results for the three months ended 30 June the telco said turnover was up 32.4 per cent year on year to £67 million.

At the same time first quarter earnings reduced from negative £8.7 million in Q1 2000 to negative £2.4 million in Q1 2001.

Part of the reasons behind Thus' improved figures is a change of focus from spending cash to build infrastructure in favour of actually flogging services and generating revenue from its corporate and SME customers.

This revised approach realised a 56.4 per cent growth in core business services in Q1 to £51.3 million and Thus claims it has a strong order book for the rest of the year.

Capital expenditure was lower than expected at £10.7 million. Full year capital expenditure is now not expected to exceed £100 million, the company said.

In a statement, CE William Allan: "Though market conditions remain difficult in the sector, our focus on quality service is now reaping rewards resulting in improved revenue and EBITDA performance, compared to last year, and a stronger order book for the year ahead.

"As we said at the time of our preliminary results, our concentration has moved from building infrastructure to exploiting the assets we have available through highly focussed sales and marketing activity. This approach is now producing results," he said.

Shares in Thus rose 3 pence (9 per cent) to 36 pence by mid morning - a million miles from the dizzy heights of 844 pence last year. ®