Speaking at the AGM being held at 11.00am today at Westfield House, 26 Westfield Road, Edinburgh, John Carey, Chairman of Wolfson Microelectronics will say: "Wolfson continues to focus its activities on building a strong position as a mixed signal semiconductor supplier for high performance digital consumer applications. In the portable space we have experienced an increased demand for our products, particularly from rapidly growing applications such as digital still cameras, MP3 players and multimedia mobile phones.In consumer applications our penetration of the DVD and digital TV market is increasing and we are already seeing customer traction for our recently introduced products targeted at the DVD receiver and recordable markets. We continue to invest heavily in R&D and are on schedule to introduce 12 new products by the end of the first half of this year.We are also continuing to expand our sales and applications teams in the Asia/Pacific region. As we highlighted in the preliminary statement on the 1st March 2004, we are continuing to see a healthy build-up of our first half order book which is at a record level for the Company.This, together with invoiced sales to date indicates that revenues will meet or be slightly ahead of analysts consensus for the first half of 2004.Additionally, in the year to date, gross margins have improved in line with our expectations, due to the change in our product mix in favour of higher margin portable products and the phasing out of low margin legacy business. Manufacturing capacity has been increased to meet production demand through the introduction of additional assembly and test capacity and the qualification of a wafer foundry in . Looking further ahead to the full year, our sales forecasts show continuing strong demand for our products as manufacturers expand production to meet the cyclical demands of the Christmas and New Year periods."
Enquiries:
Wolfson David Milne, George Elliott 0131 272 7000
Brunswick Tom Buchanan, Harry Chatli 020 7404 5959
