Interim revenues fall sharply at Filtronic, sending shares lower

Shares in Filtronic tumbled on Tuesday morning, after the communications equipment specialist revealed a sharp decline in sales.

Revenues for the six months to 30 November came in at £12.8m, compared to £21.6m in the same period in 2016, while operating profits fell from £1.8m to £0.9m.

The company also warned of a slower-than-expected end to the year. Chairman Reg Gott said: “We remain at the early stages on a number [of] key initiatives and projects, where progress toward production volume orders has been slower than anticipated.

“As a consequence, we now anticipate a second-half performance broadly similar to our first-half performance, with further growth being pushed into the 2019 full year.”

Shares in the AIM-listed group fell heavily on the update, losing as much as 21% in morning trading.

The company said a number of large orders for antennas, which had been placed in the last two financial years, had now completed. This meant first-half sales of antennas, one of its core products, had declined.

But it insisted the drop had been “partially offset by strong sales of filter products to telecoms and public safety market customers”.

Gott remained upbeat about the company's long-term performance.

“It is very pleasing to see [that] our strategy to broaden our customer base, and the markets we serve, has been validated by recent contract wins that will position us to participate over the long term in the development of further communication networks and in particular, the nascent 5G technology space," he said.

“Recent extensions to our multi-year defence contracts also provide welcome baseline revenues for the next few years.”