Trading momentum picks up at listed radiation detection firm
Radiation detection business, Kromek says it has emerged stronger from the 2021 financial year despite disruption to its markets hitting its sales in the early part of the year.
Issuing its final results for the year ended 30 April 2021, the Huddersfield-based business has reported revenue of £10.4m (2020: £13.1m), a pre-tax loss of £6.3m (2020: £18.3m loss) and adjusted EBITDA loss of £1.7m (2020: £0.4m loss).
Cash and cash equivalents at 30 April 2021 were £15.6m (30 April 2020: £9.4m).
The company saw a resumption of orders and shipments across all segments in the final two months of the first half, following the impact of COVID-19, with increased commercial activity in the second half, resulting in revenue for the second half of 2021 being 26% higher than H1 2021.
Dr Arnab Basu, CEO, said: “Against a backdrop of significant global uncertainty, Kromek has emerged from the 2021 financial year in a stronger position than when we entered.
“While the disruption across our markets in the early part of the year impacted our sales, our revenue for the second half was 26% above the first half, with the strong momentum continuing post year end.
“In particular, we are seeing continued traction in the medical imaging segment as our customers increasingly roll out their products incorporating our technology.
“We are extremely encouraged by the results that we are receiving from the piloting of our biological-threat detection solution.
“We also believe that we are well-positioned to benefit from the increase in government defence and security spending globally, including in the UK, as evidenced by our announcement today of the receipt of our first major order for our D5 RIID.
“As a result, and with excellent visibility over full year forecasts, we are on track to deliver our highest ever annual revenue for the full year to 30 April 2022, representing significant growth over 2021.”
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Kromek has this morning also said it has received new contracts and repeat orders across all of its target segments as commercial momentum continues to increase across the business.
In the nuclear detection segment, Kromek has received an order worth £173,000 from its UK Government-related customer for the Group’s D5 RIID high-performance radiation detector designed for challenging environments.
This represents the first major order for the D5 RIID following its launch last year. And the Group has received a €78,000/£66,500 repeat order from the European Commission for its D3S ID portable radiation detector.
An $84,000/£60,700 repeat order has been received from a US medical imaging customer, which is using Kromek’s detectors in its systems for nuclear medicine applications.
Following the customer’s recent receipt of FDA approval for this system, the Group expects to be awarded a multi-year supply contract in due course.
In its new target area of biological-threat detection, Kromek has been awarded a £349,000 contract with the UK Ministry of Defence, through its Defence and Security Accelerator Open Call for Innovation programme, to develop its technology to meet defence and security requirements for wide-area monitoring of biological pathogens.
The work will build upon Kromek’s existing capabilities in airborne pathogen detection and will run until November 2022.
Finally, in security screening for industrial applications, the Group has been awarded a $250,000/£180,700 repeat order from a US-based customer which is a global leader in aerospace and defence technologies servicing the US Department of Defense.
Kromek’s detectors are designed into the customer’s system which is used for ammunition scanning and the Group is the exclusive supplier of these detectors under a ten-year agreement signed in 2017.
