Betacom Plc, the mobile telephone manufacturer, is preparing to come out fighting again after its turmoil in the continental European market in the past year. Betacom is majority-owned by Amstrad Plc. The firm, which last year sold its stake in two continental joint ventures which were performing poorly, has seen net profit drop 70.6% to 103,000, (figures are affected by a 213,000 profit last time when it pulled out of the continent). Meanwhile turnover climbed a modest 3.6% to 6.9m. Even without the $213,000 bonus from last time, profits would still have plummeted 24.8%, so there is still a thorn in its side somewhere. It seems largely a question of interest: the firm only received 60,000 net interest this time, compared with 145,000 last time. This is partly due to holding dollar deposits for future purchases, the details of which were undisclosed. Betacom has had problems with its product lines: it intended to introduce a number of different lines, including two cordless telephones, updated answering machines and restyled two piece telephones, but supply problems prevented it from filling its order book and lost it over 1m in sales. This is odd, considering that Amstrad is now meant to be handling product management and procurement. Betacom chairman Ken Ashton said in his interim statement that Amstrad’s involvement in managing products was ‘an important factor in the company’s recovery following several years of reported losses up to June 1992, and has enabled us to rebuild the product range more quickly than if we had relied on our internal resources.’ This leads one to wander whether the products would have been even later without Amstrad’s role. It now plans to go back across the water by distributing joint Amstrad-Betacom products through Amstrad’s companies in Germany, Benelux and Italy. Betacom paid no dividends, and has net cash of 5.2m – up from 3.4m last time. In short, it looks as though the company is scrabbling together its product line as quickly as possible in order to go across the channel again, this time hanging onto Amstrad’s apron strings.
