FLEXIBLE printed circuit maker MFS Technology yesterday posted a 53 per cent drop in net profit to $5.9 million for the year ended September, but the company is upbeat on its prospects for the current year.

The Sesdaq-listed company's lower profit for FY02 was despite a 34 per cent rise in turnover to $118.4 million. Its managing director Pang Tak Lim said this was because the group experienced a large improvement in business during its fourth fiscal quarter.

'The first three quarters were quite slow in terms of sales, and this affected our margins,' he said. During the first six months of its FY02, MFS's net profit was just $2 million while its turnover was down 17 per cent from a year ago at $41.9 million.

'We were also affected by the delayed introduction of some new product models, which tend to command higher profit margins, and a lot of them were put on hold till the later part of the year because market sentiment was weak and our customers were not very keen on introducing new products earlier in the year.'

MFS earnings per share for FY02 slipped to 1.4 cents from 3.4 cents, while its net tangible assets grew to 15.8 cents from 12.6 cents a year ago. A final dividend of 0.3 cent per share was also declared.

The company is a subsidiary of mainboard-listed WBL Corp and was listed in January this year. Besides designing and making flexible printed circuit (FPC) boards for products like handphones and personal digital assistants, MFS also has some traditional printed circuit board operations in China. Around half of MFS' overall business also comes from China, where it supplies many original equipment manufacturers who have production facilities there.

Yesterday, Mr Pang said he is very optimistic about the company's performance in the current year, as it has over $100 million of orders on hand. This includes a recent $65 million order from a key customer for the design and manufacture of flexible printed circuits for use in colour liquid crystal display modules.

'We believe that more orders will come in, especially for colour handsets and data storage devices, and we will perform substantially better this year in both our top and bottom lines if the strong momentum continues,' he said. MFS shares yesterday ended half a cent higher at 32 cents.