Lidco swings to yearly loss

(ShareCast News) - Blood monitoring company Lidco Group swung to a pre-tax loss for the year ended 31 January 2016 as revenue slid.The group reported a pre-tax loss of £578,000 compared with a £238,000 profit the year before, on revenue of £7.6m, down from £8.3m as it sold and placed 40% fewer monitors in hospitals in the period.Meanwhile, in the UK, a number of monitor sales slipped into the current financial year and the company said the last few years' purchases of disposables have been impacted by both changes to, and the introduction and then withdrawal of, central incentives for NHS hospitals to procure hemodynamic monitors and disposables.In Continental Europe, Lidco sales fell to £0.73m from £0.89m in 2014/15, with monitor sales of 31 units compared with 50 the year before.Chief executive officer Matthew Sassone said: "Our main challenge going forward is not one of validation for our technology, but rather execution and ensuring that we have the resources to expand our product sales into the many countries where adoption of advanced hemodynamic monitoring is now occurring."We are making good progress with the strategy laid out in October 2015 and have plans to expand our commercial efforts to achieve significant top line growth."During the year, the company was awarded a five-year purchasing agreement by MedAssets, a US-based firm purchasing organisation working on behalf of a large 38 hospital healthcare group.After year end, the group won a NHS supply chain framework agreement for its products and renewed a five-year commercial agreement with Argon Medical to distribute their pressure monitoring products in UK & Ireland.At 1040 BST, Lidco shares were down 11.4% to 7.75p.