Another tough quarter for Aspocomp

Net sales for the third quarter amounted to EUR 4.9 million, a year-on-year decrease of 6% from EUR 5.2 million during Q313. Operating profit excluding non-recurring items ended up at EUR -0.4 million during the quarter, compared to EUR -0.6 million during the same period last year. “Deliveries slowed down significantly in July-September, and third-quarter net sales amounted to EUR 4.9 million, a year-on-year decrease of EUR 0.3 million. Sales decreased mainly because telecommunication customers had placed overlarge orders at the beginning of the year. In other respects, both the circuit board market and demand remained at a reasonable level,” said president and CEO Mikko Montonen. Net sales for the review period amounted to EUR 16.9 million, a year-on-year increase of EUR 2.0 million. Operating profit excluding non-recurring items increased by EUR 0.9 million and amounted to EUR -0.2 million in the review period. “Aspocomp’s performance in acquiring new customers has remained strong. New customers and deliveries to them bring additional sales, but do not as yet sufficiently offset the sudden demand fluctuations of large individual customers. One of the main focuses of Aspocomp’s new strategy is a major expansion of the customer base in order to reduce our dependence on individual customers and market segments. Our goal is to build a more diversified and demand-stable customer base over the next two years,” added Mikko Montonen. As a part of its new strategy, Aspocomp will look into combining production and development activities in Finland as well as the possible closing of the Teuva plant. The combining of production and development aims to enhance the company's capacity utilisation, and simplify the company’s internal processes. The company expects that combining will yield annual savings of approximately EUR 0.9 million.