Investment sees losses rise by 50% at Rapid Technology

Losses at the Rapid Technology Group have risen from £1 million to £1.5 million for the year to June 30th last.

Losses at the Rapid Technology Group have risen from £1 million to £1.5 million for the year to June 30th last.

The Irish company said the figures reflected the level of investment it had made in the last year in its operator input and display technology, known as "screen key".

The results also reflect costs incurred in setting up a marketing and sales operation in the United States, according to the group.

The losses are the same before and after taxation as the company did not incur any tax liability during the year.

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Turnover was down from £829,194 in the 10 months to June 1997 to £205,478 for the 12 months to June 30th, 1998. Gross profits were down from £358,742 to £70,350, while, reflecting the expansion into the United States market, net operating expenses rose from £976,664 to £1.6 million. The loss per share went up from 7p to 7.75p.

The company is listed on the Developing Companies Market (DCM) in Dublin and the Alternative Investment Market in London. Yesterday its share price was unchanged in Dublin at 107p, while in London it stayed at its 12-month low of 831/2p sterling. The company's patented screen key technology involves keyboards where each button, rather than containing just a single letter of the alphabet, is a mini-display. The keyboards can be used in several industries, including retailing, call centres, banking and process control.

The company said 674 screen key units were delivered to customers in Europe and the US this year. Since it began selling the screen key units, 3,700 have been installed in the two markets. It said the level of sales this year was influenced by two factors.

The first was "longer than anticipated evaluation periods" by customers when deciding whether to purchase the screen key units. The second was reluctance of some customers to commit themselves to extended rollouts of the technology.

The company said that, despite difficulties, it continued to gain new customers such as Moss Brothers and the Pier Group in Britain and the 80-store KVAT Group in the US.

It said it had been particularly successful in targeting the dry cleaning sector in the United States and this should become evident in next year's figures.

The company started with one generic product but in the last year has designed five products, three of which are aimed at the point of sale market with the others focused at financial services and call centres.

The chairman of the company, Mr Patrick McDonagh, who set up CBT, said it "takes time and investment to break into this market but we continue to have leading differentiating technology.

"If we can maintain our current progress in convincing a number of major customers to adopt our products, the potential revenues are very significant," he added. The finance director of the group, Mr Roger Bannon, said the company did not expect spending on sales and marketing to increase in the coming year.