Windar Photonics signals record year in 2017

Windar Photonics updated the market on its trading for the 12 month period to 31 December on Tuesday, reporting that overall, the company continued to make “good progress” in all of its important key areas

The AIM-traded firm said its revenue increased to €2.2m, up by 84% on revenue in 2016, while gross profit was €1.0m against €0.6m in 2016.

Order intake in 2017 was €5.9m - up four-fold compared to 2016, with the company’s order backlog at the end of 2017 for deliveries in 2018 improved to €3.9m, up from €0.2m at the end of 2016.

Windar said it continued to reduce its operational costs by 30% to €2.1m, despite realising costs related to the realignment process carried through in 2017.

It said its net EBITDA loss for the year was reduced by 57% to €1.1m.

Cash holdings at the end of 2017 amounted to €1.3m, including restricted cash holdings of €0.2m, which were up from €0.8m and nil respectively in 2016.

“As part of our realignment process undertaken in 2017, combined with extending our distribution network around the world, we have now further reduced costs with closures of offices other than our headquarters and main production facility in Copenhagen and our sales and service office in Shanghai,” the board said in its statement.

“Despite the reduction in the overall operational cost level, the company has in 2017 increased resources within our wind analytic and turbine optimisation team who have been focusing on developing new features such as wake and turbulence detection.”

Windar said those developments led to a record number of ongoing original equipment manufacturer turbine integration projects at the end of the year.

That development, combined with a reduction in the company's core product costs during the year, permitted competitive pricing of Windar products in the market, the board explained.

Further details of trading in 2017, together with a business update, would be provided in the final results for the year to 31 December 2017, which were expected to be released in late April.

“2017 was a record year for the company and I am particularly pleased that we enter 2018 with a significant order backlog and with further orders already recorded in 2018,” said CEO Jørgen Korsgaard Jensen.

“Following the build out of our distributor network in key wind markets with credible partners, we have been able to further rationalise the business to focus on what we do best - developing further LiDAR solutions to reduce costs and to improve the performance of both existing and new build wind farms.”

Jensen said that on top of that, with a record number of ongoing OEM integration projects, the board expected that some of those would translate into larger scale orders for new turbine design wins in 2018, supporting the company’s long-term revenue targets.

“These factors, along with the reduction in our core product cost base, have laid the foundation for further progress in 2018.”