SRT Marine expects to post FY pre-tax loss

Maritime surveillance outfit SRT Marine said on Friday that it expects to report revenues of approximately £8.2m and a pre-tax loss of £5.8m for the year ended 31 March.

During the period, existing system contract customers made cash payments of £13.0m per agreed project payment schedules, with a further £5.7m due in the coming year. However, because of Covid-19 lockdown related implementation delays, no invoice milestones were completed and, as a result, no revenues were recognised during the year.

A fixed one-year Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme support loan of £2.5m from SRT's bankers was drawn down in April, with repayments to be made on a quarterly basis commencing in July through to April 2023.

SRT stated that given the Covid environment, its transceivers business performed "robustly", achieving marginally higher revenues on the previous year and stable gross profit margins, while the "unexpected length and frequency of Covid lockdowns" delayed new system opportunities in the Middle East into the new financial year.

However, the AIM-listed group did note that forced delays in new and existing system contracts had enabled its systems delivery team, in-country partners and customers to "substantially restructure and refine" its systems implementation model, with the firm now able to pre-build and configure many of its system modules in the UK and ship to in-country partners who can be supported remotely and with less on-site SRT resource application to install and commission the systems, facilitating multiple project implementation scale-up in the process.

Chief executive Simon Tucker said: "We now have seven new system contracts worth a total of £125.0m which are pending commencement as the respective countries relax restrictions and contracting processes catch up and normalise.

"The forced delay has provided valuable time for our delivery team, in-country partners and customers to restructure and consolidate our systems delivery methods, implementing key method changes and equipment preparations that will facilitate the necessary significant scaling as lockdowns ease in the coming months and customer contracting proceeds."

As of 1015 BST, SRT Marine shares were up 7.46% at 33.85p.