Engineering giant Renishaw has built on its financial recovery from the pandemic by posting record first half-year revenue and pre-tax profit.
The FTSE 250 firm, which is based at Wotton-under-Edge in Gloucestershire, published interim results for the six months to December 31, 2021, with group revenue at £325.2m - up from £255.1m for the same period a year earlier.
The company made an adjusted profit before tax of £84.2m, up from £43.4m in 2020. In its last set of full-year results the company posted an adjusted pre-tax profit of £119.7m and statutory profit of £139m.
Renishaw, a global provider of manufacturing technologies, analytical instruments and medical devices, said it had seen record levels of demand as its key sectors recovered while semiconductor and electronics markets remained strong.
Renishaw's executive chairman Sir David McMurtry said: “We achieved very strong revenue growth in all regions and there was growth for all product lines within our manufacturing technologies segment, most notably for the encoder and gauging lines.
“The strong demand for our encoder product lines continues to be driven by increased investments in industrial automation and the semiconductor and electronics capital equipment markets, while our gauging line is benefiting from a recovery in metal cutting operations and increased investments in shopfloor metrology.”
The company’s board said the firm had a "robust" balance sheet, with net cash and bank deposit balances of £222.0m, compared with £215m at June 30, 2021.
Directors recommended an interim dividend of 16p per share and said they remained confident in the firm’s long-term prospects, with the company possessing a record order book.
Bosses said they expected full-year revenue to be in the range of £650m to £690m and adjusted profit before tax to be between £157m to £181m.
The company said while there was “continuing uncertainty” regarding the impact of Covid-19, as well as supply chain challenges, overall impact and likelihood of its principal risks was not considered to have changed significantly.
Renishaw said it had experienced some delays at the UK borders for shipments into the EU and for imports from the bloc and other regions, including from its manufacturing facility in India.
The firm said it had minimised the impact of this on customers by establishing a warehouse in Ireland, expanding its existing warehouse in Germany, and increasing the inventory of certain finished goods and components at sites within the EU and the UK.
Last year Renishaw’s octogenarian founders and two majority shareholders Mr McMurtry and John Deer announced plans to sell their stakes in the company, but the formal sale process ended months later after the board failed to find the right buyer.
During its fiancial year ending June 30 2020, Renishaw saw adjusted profit fall by more than 50% and it previously cut almost 600 jobs as part of a restructure to save cash.
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