Feedback Plc, produced an extremely disappointing set of results late yesterday, according to chairman Roger Barnett. The Crowborough, East Sussex company that designs, manufactures and sells a range of electronic, electric and computer equipment for education and industry once again displayed a degree of reticence that made a mockery of its communicative name. Losses before tax were ú723,200, compared with ú721,600 profits last year. Turnover fell by 13% to ú8.3m. The principle reason for the slump were the range of measures introduced earlier in the year to shift the emphasis from high-margin manufactured products to lower-margin factored ones in the Feedback Data business, and a lack of sales in the Instruments company, according to Barnett. He added that Instruments is certainly selling more factored products than manufactured compared with what it was doing previously, but there was no concerted shift there – it just didn’t get the volume, he said, especially in its export business. Barnett was extremely coy about how long these measures will continue or what they were actually intended to achieve, but he said that the aim was to develop the company along lines that would suit the US market, especially in the education field. In terms of the time-scales to which he was working, all he could offer was that it was an on-going situation. The US arm cut its losses slightly and increased sales and orders. The German subsidiary is taking longer than expected to build up. The final dividend of a halfpenny makes a penny for the year, a reduction of a third.
