(Alliance News) - Plastic parts manufacturer Carclo PLC's belated first-half results showed a swing to loss on Tuesday, attributed to a sharp rise in exceptional costs and amid struggles at its Wipac LED lighting division, which the company has since sold.
More positively, revenue in the period to September 30 rose 12% year-on-year to GBP56.1 million from GBP49.9 million.
Carclo swung to a pretax loss of GBP5.6 million from a GBP3.4 million profit the year before.
Exceptional costs climbed sharply from the year before. Costs from continuing operations rose to GBP1.9 million from GBP200,000, largely due to advisory costs that Carclo incurred as it pursues a restructure.
Carclo also booked GBP2.8 million in exceptional costs from discontinuing operations, all related to its Wipac business.
Carclo finally exited the loss-making Wipac business in December. It announced it appointed Rachael Wilkinson and Zelf Hussain of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as joint administrators of Wipac, which was immediately sold to Wipac Technology Ltd, a newly formed subsidiary of Wuhu Anrui Optoelectrics Co Ltd.
The GBP10.5 million proceeds from the sale will be applied by the administrators to reduce the outstanding liabilities owed to the creditors of Wipac, Carclo explained. It said it expects to secure about GBP3.5 million of the net proceeds.
It already had disposed of the Czech Wipac unit in November for EUR1.1 million.
Carclo Chair Mark Rollins said on Tuesday: "The strong results of the continuing businesses, along with the exit from the Wipac businesses after the period end, demonstrate the clear progress being made to stabilize the business."
Carclo's "long-term funding position" is in doubt however. The company said it is negotiations with its lender and a pension trustee and said there can be "no certainty that a satisfactory outcome will be reached".
The company said it has a revolving credit facility of GBP30.0 million due to expire on January 31 next year.
Carclo added: "Negotiations are currently ongoing with the bank, to renew the bank lending facilities beyond their current expiry at the end of January 2021, and with the pension trustee, to agree the level of future contributions to the pension scheme."
Carclo shares were suspended from trading early January, after missing the deadline to publish these interim results. This follows delays to the reporting of its annual results for its financial year ended March 2019.
By Eric Cunha; ericcunha@alliancenews.com
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Carclo (CAR)