28th Sep 2018 11:26
LONDON (Alliance News) - Photonstar LED Group PLC said Friday its half-year loss narrowed, despite revenue dropping sharply, as it continued to shift away from being a LED manufacturer to becoming a software provider.
For the six months ended June, pretax loss narrowed to GBP492,000 from GBP604,000 the year prior. This was despite revenue falling to GBP1.3 million from GBP2.3 million the year before.
Cost of sales fell mostly in line with revenue. Additionally, Photonstar booked an exceptional profit of GBP330,000 from the sale of subsidiary Camtronics Vale Ltd, compared to no such gain a year before.
"At the beginning of 2018 we announced the sale of Camtronics to certain members of the Camtronics management team," Photonstar Chief Executive Officer James McKenzie said. "This represented a further step along the path of the group's transformation into a software and services business."
In January, Photonstar sold Camtronics Vale Ltd for GBP150,000 in cash.
"We then released Halycon V2 in May 2018, which we believe will allow the group to progress beyond the various single site trials that we currently have in place and roll-out halcyon across multiple sites, as a solution to customers' operational and cost problems," McKenzie added. "This software release was a major milestone for the group, and I would like to thank our customers and shareholders for their patience and continued support."
"The success of the paid for trials for both Halycon V2 and the control platform, halcyonPRO2 represent significant developments for PhotonStar and is the focus for the group's future growth prospects," McKenzie continued. "As we have not yet signed a material roll out contract for these products there have been only small revenues derived from these products to date.
"Progress has been encouraging as we have now installed a number of commercial trials," McKenzie added. "The product appears to have been well received but it is taking customers much longer to move from trial to deployment than was anticipated. Although nothing can be guaranteed, we are expecting to receive orders for full scale deployment by the end of 2018 and will update the market as these occur."
Shares in Photonstar were 16% lower at 0.15 pence on Friday.
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