(Alliance News) - EnSilica PLC on Tuesday reported a swing to a profit for the financial year ended May 31 as it hailed a milestone and its outlook for financial 2024.

The Abingdon, Oxfordshire-based semiconductor designer and supplier said it swung to an annual pretax profit of GBP47,000 from a loss of GBP534,000 a year ago. Revenue climbed 34% to GBP20.5 million from GBP15.3 million. However, cost of sales increased 20% to GBP12.3 million from GBP10.2 million, while administrative costs grew by 46% to GBP7.4 million from GBP5.0 million.

EnSilica declared no dividend, unchanged from a year prior.

Looking ahead, the company said the current financial year 2024 started well with existing contracts, new business momentum and a "strong pipeline with a sizeable order book that continues to underpin management's confidence in the business." The company expects to continue to capitalise on "the significant growth opportunity that exists within the semiconductor industry."

Meanwhile, Ensilica said it reached a tape-out milestone of industrial application specific integrated circuits, known as ASIC, for the design and supply of an industrial ASIC which incorporates an industrial Arm based controller. A tape-out starts the manufacturing of mask sets used for production of the ASIC. An Arm based device can be designed to incorporate the processor and might be able to make adaptations to its architecture and functionality.

Chief Executive Officer Ian Lankshear said: "We expect this to lead to further design wins as a consequence of the increasing number of opportunities in this industrial market. There is a trend to include artificial intelligence processing accelerators in new ASICs. Also, and driven by new EU legislation, addressing advanced cyber security protection is increasingly becoming a requirement. EnSilica is well placed to take advantage of these trends leading to opportunities to re-design a range of ASICs."

EnSilica shares were 2.3% higher at 69.08 pence each on Tuesday morning in London.

By Tom Budszus, Alliance News reporter

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