Nanofilm Technologies International’s share price plunged by as much as a third at the start of trading this morning, following a weaker than expected earnings reported for its 1HFY2021, that missed analysts’ expectations “by a mile”.
For the six months ended June 30, the company, one of the hottest IPOs last year, recorded earnings of $18 million, down 3.1% y-o-y, and is barely a fifth of consensus full year forecast of $85 million.
While the drag on the bottom line was attributed to expansion costs of its production facilities, the company’s revenue growth fell short of expectations too.
To add to the jitters, the company separately announced that its COO Ricky Tan has resigned - just less than two months after CEO Lee Liang Huang quit for “health reasons”.
At an earnings call this morning, deputy CEOs Gian Yi Hsen and Gary Ho revealed that while the departure of Lee was “unplanned”, the resignation of Tan was “due to a combination of factors”.
Gian and Ho said that as the company was restructured into a “BU model”, (business unit) the need for the COO role was not “as relevant” with the new structure. Gian added that “we’ve been operating without him for a couple of months, [and] the impact has been very minimal."
See: Analysts downgrade Nanofilm, cut TP on weak 1H21 results, vacant COO role
See also: Nanofilm's COO quits, less than two months after CEO; earnings down 3.1% on plant expansion costs
