Anritsu reports flat revenues, profit impacts from R&D

Anristu saw essentially flat year-over-year revenues for its first fiscal quarter ending June 30, but its profits for the quarter were down nearly 50% to about $8 million.
Meanwhile, its revenues were $216 million, down less than 1% from the $218 million reported in the year-ago period.
In its financial release, Anritsu noted that mobile broadband use continues to expand, as does the acceleration of LTE network rollouts and the exploration of LTE-Advanced features such as carrier aggregation (CA), which need to be thoroughly tested prior to, during and after implementation. The company said it has been strengthening its offerings, investing in R&D for its product lines and improving its customer support capabilities, and that R&D needs for mid- and long-term growth remained high.
The company’s test and measurement segment had profit losses of 27.5% for the quarter, Anritsu reported, despite revenues being down only about 1%. Testing accounts for about 75% of Anritsu’s business, which also includes an industrial automation segment and some network equipment, according to the company’s quarterly presentation.
Although demand for LTE R&D instruments was strong during its fiscal first quarter, Anritsu said that the Japanese market was “weak overall” and “demand of measuring instruments for base stations seemed to run its course in North America.” Meanwhile, R&D costs were up due to development projects for the mobile market.
Still, Anritsu expects its test and measurement-related revenues to be up 7% for the full year of 2014, with profits around $107 million for the year.
Also this week, Anritsu introduced an all-in-one optical field instrument for transport testing. The MT100A Network Master Pro (shown above left) is designed as a lightweight, small portable testing unit for optical transport network testing, including the ability to measure Ethernet and SDH/SONET client signals in order to allow technicians to install or maintain mobile or fixed-access networks, or metro or core transmission networks. Get more of this week’s test and measurement news here.
Follow me on Twitter! @khillrcr
Image from Anritsu