Filtronic wants to grow product range despite loss

Shipley-based Filtronic said made a pre-tax loss of 1.2m, compared to a 100,000 profit in the first six months of last year.

The firm,whose point-to-point technology links mobile phone base stations, repeated its warning that a key customer's buyout could damage sales. Nera Networks was bought by Israel's Ceragon Networks, a rival maker of point-to-point systems, for $48.5m (30.6m) earlier this month.

Today Filtronic said it was planning for a "significantly" reduced point-to-point sales to Nera in the second-half.

Howard Ford, chairman of Filtronic, said: "Whilst dealing with the potential adverse impact of the acquisition of one of our key customers, Filtronic continues to further its strategy to transform the scale of the business and diversify its customer base, with an expanded range of products, to exploit significant opportunities in the wireless telecoms market presented by 3G/4G rollouts."

The firm said revenue from continuing operations was 7.3m compared with 9.6m for the first-half last year and 6 for the second six months of 2010.

It made an operating loss from continuing operations before exceptional items of 800,000, split between 700,000 for the point to point segment and 100,000 for the base station segment.

An annual dividend of 1p (700,0000) for 2009-10 was paid to shareholders on 5 November. Tthere is no interim dividend.