Overseas sales help Lidco offset UK decline
Strong overseas sales helped heart monitoring equipment supplier Lidco shrug off the effects of lower NHS spending in the UK.
Sales in the year to January climbed to £4.05m from £3.44m the previous year. Pre-tax losses narrowed to £2m from £2.6m.
The UK accounted for 43% of 2007/08 revenues, compared with 58% the year before, meaning the country's revenues declined on an absolute basis. Lidco said strong sales growth in continental Europe helped offset this.
The company said exports accounting for the majority of sales was of benefit since it reduced the company's reliance on a "stop-start" UK market. It added that UK trading is expected to improve moderately this year with NHS capital purchase budgets likely to be slightly more freely available.
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Chief executive Terry O' Brien told Sharecast he expected the trend toward overseas sales growing as a percentage of revenues to continue.
"We used the UK as a launchpad, but it makes up only 7% of the world market, so clearly you don't want to be reliant on just the UK," he said.
"At the moment Scandinavia and eastern European countries such as Croatia, Slovenia and the Czech Republic are big for us. We're not so strong in France and Germany, but we're going to try and change that situation this year."
