Turnover and pre-tax profits down for listed electronics manufacturer

Filtronic, a designer and manufacturer of antennas, filters and other products for the communications and wireless telecoms sectors has reported falls in turnover and pre-tax profits today.

The Shipley-based business has released its full year results for the 12 months ended 31 May 2019, which show a 2019 turnover of £15.9m compared to £21.6m the previous year.

Over the same period, pre-tax profits were down from £2.7m to £0.1m, with the company confirming its earlier decision to sell off its Telecoms Antenna Operations.

EBITDA from continuing operations was £0.7m (2018: £3.6m).

The Group had net cash of £2.5m at the end of the financial year (2018: £3.6m). It explained the reduction was due to investment in internally-generated development costs as well as in plant and equipment.

Company chairman Reg Gott said: “The financial year proved to be both challenging and rewarding.

“Despite setbacks associated with our Telecoms Antenna Operation, both in terms of drastically reduced demand for mMIMO antennas and warranty claims, we exit the year with renewed optimism on the back of strong demand for our 5G backhaul, public safety and defence and aerospace offerings.

“5G backhaul demand has been strong and during the past few months we have built up a sizeable order book for which we have been scaling up production. Additionally, we saw production of the first two defence contracts previously announced fully ramped. 

“As previously announced, we have decided to sell our Telecoms Antenna Operations.

“We have concluded that to be successful in this consolidating market requires a greater scale of organisation to compete with the much larger competitors now operating in this part of the market.”

The business noted it had increased production capacity and capability at its Sedgefield site to meet rising demand.

And it added its public safety market product offering and engineering capability has been extended.