Dialight profits slide in 'challenging' year

The London-listed group said moving its manufacturing operations under its own hybrid model back in-house and terminating its relationship with its manufacturing partner had led to many improvements in its operations.

However, the improvements were not enough to offset issues such as its manufacturing partner's "continued inability" to achieve adequate production output, which resulted in late product deliveries and lost orders, as Dialight saw profits fall 13% to £47.1m in the twelve months ended 31 December.

Group revenues dropped 9% to £125m, while European revenues picked up 4% and Asia Pacific soared 16%, while US revenues dropped 5%.

Looking forward, Dialight expects to see "some" gross margin recovery as it returns to "more normal levels of service".

Chief executive Marty Rapp said: "2018 was a challenging year for Dialight but one in which we made considerable progress to address the operational issues we faced at the start of the year, reducing late orders significantly during the year.

"We remain excited by the group's prospects over the medium to long term and are confident of delivering future growth. The board's expectations of further progress in 2019 remain unchanged, again with a second-half weighting."

As of 1335 GMT, Dialight shares had climbed 5.88% to 360p.