Vitrox’s third quarter net profit fell 32.5% year-on-year to RM22.5mil.
PETALING JAYA: Vitrox Corp Bhd
remains cautiously optimistic about its prospects for the final quarter of the financial year ending December 2024 (4Q24).
Acknowledging that the supply chain disruption due to the Red Sea crisis and US port strikes are affecting global shipments and increasing shipping costs, the group said it would continue to be resilient and adaptable while implementing precautionary measures.
Vitrox’s third quarter net profit ended Sept 30, fell 32.5% year-on-year (y-o-y) to RM22.5mil, while revenue also slipped 2.2% to RM146.7mil.
It attributed the slide in turnover to the slow recovery in market demand, which caused the Automated Board Inspection (ABI) to experience soft demand.
The company also attributed substantial drop in profits to the weakening of the US dollar.
It was responsible for the group’s 34.8% y-o-y decline in net earnings for the nine months ended Sept 30 to RM67.8mil, as revenue edged lower by 6.7% to RM403.5mil.
In addition, through a filing with Bursa Malaysia, Vitrox said continuous investment in research and development in the introduction of new products during the first nine months of the year had contributed to the group’s lower cumulative profit.
Compared with the previous three months ended June 30, the group achieved a higher revenue, reporting a rise 6.9% from RM137.2mil, mainly attributable to favourable orders from ABI and its machine vision system.
Quarterly net profit however, decreased by 20.1% from RM28.1mil due to foreign exchange loss.
Vitrox has not declared any dividend so far in 2024, including for the quarter in review compared with last year when it announced a dividend of 1.1 sen per share during 3Q24, which brought the total dividend in 2023 to 2.08 sen per share.
