US market continues to trouble Promethean World

CLASSROOM technology supplier Promethean World saw a slower rate of sales decline in the third quarter, but is still being hampered by a “difficult” US market which is responsible for half of all revenues.

In an interim management statement covering the nine months to the end of September, the Blackburn company said third quarter sales were down 6% at £37.5m.

Year-to-date group revenue was £107.6m, 12% down on the same period last year.

“The US market remained difficult, with Promethean’s North American revenues being the primary reason for the decline in revenues versus Q3 2012. International market revenues were broadly flat in the third quarter,” said the company.

Sales of interactive display systems were £100.4m, down 7.8% on the same period last year. In the third quarter, Promethean sold 33,500 interactive display systems, down 8.8%.

At September 30, Promethean had net cash of £14.5m up from £9.1m in June and £5.8m in September 2012. The company said this reflected trading performance and working capital management.

The company added: “Over the longer term, Promethean believes it is well positioned to benefit from the proven impact of interactive learning technology. In the near-term, we expect market conditions to remain challenging with continued pressure on education budgets and competition for the share of these budgets from the adoption of tablet technology.”