LONDON (Alliance News) - Tube manipulation specialist Tricorn Group PLC on Wednesday said weakening end markets drove down revenue in its financial year, and caused its pretax loss to widen.
Tricorn reported revenue of GBP18.0 million for the year ended March 31, down from GBP21.2 million a year earlier, due to further weakening in the company's end-markets, particularly within the Energy division.
As such, Tricorn said it reduced costs during the year, delivering around GBP10.0 million of efficiency gains in the year which, couple with the benefit of new business wins, helped to mitigate the impact of lower volumes.
Gross profit dropped, however, to GBP7.3 million from GBP7.6 million, and the company posted pretax loss of GBP273,000 compared to the GBP55,000 loss reported a year earlier. The pretax loss figures are for continuing operations and before restructuring costs, intangible asset amortisation and share based payment charges, Tricorn said.
Tricorn has two main business divisions, Energy and Transportation, and whilst good progress was made in the Transportation division, both in the US and UK, in China, Tricorn's Transportation division was loss making. As such, Tricorn in March said it would be merging its facilities in China.
The Energy division "continued to make further improvements to operational performance but was challenged by the impact of significantly lower revenue levels as its customers experienced reduced demand from the majority of their key end markets," Tricorn said.
"In China the restructuring of our manufacturing operations is progressing as planned and once complete we expect this business to contribute positively to overall profitability. The board expects that whilst underlying demand will remain challenging we are well positioned to make further progress in the current year," Tricorn said in a statement.
Shares in Tricorn were untraded on Wednesday, having last traded at 10.25 pence.
By Hannah Boland; hannahboland@alliancenews.com; @Hannaheboland
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