Calnex shares rise amid ‘return to growth’ hope

Calnex CEO Tommy Cook

Shares of Linlithgow-based telecoms testing and measurement firm Calnex Solutions plc rose as much as 8% after the firm said it is confident of a return to growth in the 12 months to March 2025.

That’s despite Calnex reporting a decline in revenue of 38% to £7.8 million for the six months to September 30, 2023, and a loss before tax of £600,000.

“The board retain full confidence in future growth and accordingly has resolved to pay an interim dividend of 0.31 pence per ordinary share (FY23 Interim dividend 0.31p) …” said Calnex.

Calnex’s customers include BT, China Mobile, NTT, Ericsson, Nokia, Intel, Qualcomm, IBM and Meta.

Calnex went public at 48p per share in October 2020 and its shares soared as high as £1.95 in January 2023. However, the firm’s shares have plummeted since January and are now down 60% year to date.

Calnex shares currently trade around 66p, giving the firm a stock market value of about £58 million.

In its outlook, Calnex said: “The board expects to close the year in line with the current market expectations …

“Confident in a return to growth in the 12 months to March 2025 through creation of new use cases for existing products, plus the development of new products and expansion into growing sectors …

“Underlying market drivers, including the increase in network complexity, the build-out of 5G and data centre investment, remain positive.”

Calnex CEO Tommy Cook said: “While the results for the first half are disappointing, the strength of our offering, team, and balance sheet, resulting from our consistent delivery in recent years, means we are well positioned to weather the current conditions while continuing to invest in our product roadmap.

 “We have experienced markets such as these before and are adept at managing the business back to growth.

 “We believe the fundamental drivers that underpin the build out of the mobile network and the expansion of data centres and cloud computing capacity have not changed, but rather investment put on pause due to the macro-economic climate.

“We will continue to focus on the deployment of our new product programme as a means to generate additional customer demand and are confident that Calnex will return to growth in FY25.”