Southampton-based SPI Lasers has announced interim results to June following a technical hiccup. The company claims to be one of only two fibre laser product suppliers in the world. Originally, a telecom facing business SPI refocused its attentions and began producing lasers using fibre optic cables. These offer higher performance, improved energy efficiency and stability to end-users, with global sales expected to exceed $900 million by 2010.

Whilst turnover in the first half increased 128% to £3m (£1.3m), compared to £3.5m for the whole of 2005, the company reported a loss before tax of £4.7m and losses per share of 25.9p. Management admitted it had technical issues during the summer in scaling the power of its GTWave platform laser, which will impact numbers for the third quarter. Chief executive David Parker assures that this blip is now behind them and that problems ‘were resolved within 3 months’.

Despite this the number of customer accounts has doubled since the end of 2005 to reach 80, indicating continued interest in SPI’s products. The company expect to increase this to 130 by the year-end. The market reacted badly to the figures sending the shares plummeting 15% to 195p.

Growth Company Investor said that the shares looked a worthy long-term punt at just under 180p in March, when the company still had a long way to go. This is still the case, but broker Panmure Gordon expects losses to be shaved significantly by the forth quarter of 2007 to £2.7m on sales of £20m. Panmure has downgraded forecasts as a result and its recommendation form ‘Buy’ to ‘Hold’. We still think that the company has long term potential, given the expected uptake of fibre-based lasers and sustained customer interest. Hold.