RETINAL imaging company Optos has seen its share price soar five per cent after boosting profits and predicting it is on course for a strong second half of the year.
The Fife company saw its half year revenue fall back slightly from $73 million (£44m) to $72.7m.
Revenue from the core Americas market was up three per cent from $49.5m to $50.8m and Optos suggested it was trying to open up new markets in Latin America.
There was a reduction in turnover from Australia because of the timings of device installations which will slip into the second half of the year. That saw revenue from the rest of the world dip from $23.5m to $21.7m. Optos said performance in Asia was generally good but some European markets, particularly Italy, France and Spain, remain soft.
However, pre-tax profits more than doubled from $700,000 to $1.6m for the six months to March 31 on the back of improved margins and lower costs.
The growth in the customer base, up by 628 in the period, was led by the continuing adoption of the Daytona device.
The Daytona, a lighter and more user-friendly technology than its predecessors, was launched two years ago.
Now more than 2000 have been installed around the world, making up about 30 per cent of the company's active devices.
Chief executive Roy Davis said progress was being made on reducing the manufacturing costs of Daytona, which should see the average drop from $20,000 to about $15,000 by the end of the current financial year.
He said: "We continue to see traction with it. It is the lion's share of the new installations. We continue to work on bringing the cost of Daytona down, which helps back through on the margin side of things."
A consolidation of operations into its main sites in Dunfermline, Boston in the US and Adelaide in Australia is also under way and is anticipated to lead to savings of around $4m next year.
Mr Davis said: "We are just saying we don't need as many locations so let's move into areas where we have critical mass. It will be nothing other than a positive impact for Scotland."
According to Mr Davis the research and development pipeline, run from the Dunfermline headquarters where around 200 people are employed, is looking strong with new products scheduled to launch in the 2015 financial year.
Shares closed up 8p at 176.25p.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article