Radstone Technology Plc, manufacturer of subsystems, has announced the first results since its flotation on the London Stock Exchange in February. The Towcester, Northamptonshire manufacturer boasts that these results comfortably exceeded the forecast made at the time of flotation. However, the company’s growth rate has slowed down. For the past four years Radstone’s compound turnover growth has been 14%, it grew at 9% last year. More specifically, turnover in the Military Products Division rose 22%, but it fell by 21% in the Industrial Products Division. This was down to reduced spending in the Industrial Control & Measurement market segment which consequently affected the Industrial Products business. UK sales were up 12% and the division’s business remained export-led with 65% of sales outside the UK, mainly to Europe and the US. Foundation Technology Ltd, an operating division within Radstone, showed a stronger performance than last year; external sales increased by 66%. The Radstone parent remained the division’s largest single customer but internal sales increased a meagre 14%. Radstone believes this is due to the effects of the recession on the Industrial Products Division. The strongest performing market was the Far East with sales of #5.8m, up 151.1% on last year. The company plans to continue its expansion in data communications, specifically communications controllers, high speed graphics devices and a range of sub-systems to be based on PowerPC RISC architecture.
