3 July 2013

Advanced Photonix’s annual sales fall 20%

For its fiscal fourth-quarter 2013 (to end-March), Advanced Photonix Inc of Ann Arbor, MI, USA (which designs and makes APD, PIN, and FILTRODE photodetectors, HSOR high-speed optical receivers, and T-Ray terahertz instrumentation) has reported net sales of $6m, down 8% on $6.5m a year ago but up 3% on $5.8m last quarter. Sales for full-year fiscal 2013 were $23.6m, down 20% on the prior year due to telecom, homeland security and medical market sales.

Gross margin for Q4 was 35.8%, down on 42% last quarter but up on 34.2% a year ago, aided by cost-reduction efforts and a favourable product mix.  Full-year gross margin was 37.3%, down on 40.2% the prior year.

Operating expenses for Q4 were $3.3m, similar to a year ago and $3.5m last quarter, but equating to 54.5% of revenue, down from 59% last quarter but up from 49.9% a year ago. Full-year operating expenses were $13.2m (55.9% of revenue), down from $14.5m (49.2% of revenue) last year.

Adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization and stock compensation) was -$572,000 for Q4, increasing from -$485,000 last quarter and -$416,000 a year ago. For full-year 2013, adjusted EBITDA was -$2.2m, compared to +$257,000 a year ago. During the year, cash reserves hence fell from $3.2m to $619,000.  Net working capital as of end-March 2013 was $4.9m, and the firm had the ability to borrow up to $1.5m on its line of credit.

“Last year was a difficult year, but we expect to return to growth this coming fiscal year,” says chairman & CEO Richard Kurtz. “The Thailand flooding in late 2011 continued to impact 100G orders from our customers early in our fiscal year 2013 and we did not succeed getting our new low-cost source for a subcomponent to ramp up in volume as needed until after year end. Coupled with a slowdown in China and the fall off of the In-Q-Tel contract work, we saw our top line drop by 20%,” he adds.

“As we announced in June, the supply-chain bottleneck has been solved and we have been able to respond to our customers increased demands for 100G product,” notes Kurtz. “Combined with the recent purchase of the operating assets of Silonex, we expect a return to growth, with fiscal 2014 sales looking to be higher than this last year by over 35%."

Advanced Photonix acquired Silonex Inc of Montreal, Canada, a subsidiary of ARCAS Automotive Group (Luxco 1) S.a.r.l., in March for $900,000. Silonex designs and manufactures optoelectronic devices and sensor solutions based on cadmium sulphide (CdS) for vertical markets including industrial controls, banking, vending, medical and telecoms.

See related items:

Advanced Photonix acquires CdS-based opto sensor maker Silonex

Advanced Photonix’s quarterly sales rebound by 4%

Advanced Photonix’s quarterly sales fall 10%

Advanced Photonix reports quarterly revenue down 17% year-on-year

Tags: Advanced Photonix

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