12th Sep 2013 10:23
LONDON (Alliance News) - Elektron Technology PLC said Thursday it swung to a pretax loss in the first half as it weathered delays in production caused by two factory relocations. Elektron also said that it incurred one-time costs to streamline its business.
For the half year ended July 31, the group had a pretax loss of GBP2.4 million, down from a pretax profit of GBP500,000 a year before. Revenues decreased to GP23.7 million from GBP25.7 million.
During the period Elektron moved manufacturing for its Arcolectric brand to its production facility in Tunisia and began to reduce activity at its facility in China. It also moved its ophthalmic equipment production from its Redhill factory to Torquay. The company is drawing out of China, and expects to complete its exit from manufacturing there over the next twelve months. It also closed a warehouse in the US, as part of ongoing streamlining.
Elektron said that more than GBP2 million of sales orders had been deferred to the second half of the year due to the production delays, and that it had also incurred further exceptional costs to support production and recover the lagging orders. Losses were further widened by the investment in restructuring across the company.
However, the company remained confident, saying that it anticipated an improved performance for the rest of the year now that production volumes have stabilised and output has returned to previous levels.
Shares in the connecting-and-monitoring-equipment company were trading down 5.0% at 10.00 pence Thursday morning.
By Hana Stewart-Smith; [email protected]; @HanaSSAllNews
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