Bookham takes it on the chin

NEWS Bookham Technologies, the optical component maker, has suffered a huge drop in revenues for its fourth quarter. The company, which supplies components for fibre optics networks turned in revenues of £2.1m for the last quarter of 2001 - a massive slump of 82 per cent on the £11.5m for the comparable quarter in 2000. It is blaming this on the general decline within the industry. Although it has managed to reduce its cash burn rate from £30m to £15m and has £184.8m in the bank, losses increased from £8.5m to £14.1m. And the company is warning that in the coming year it will continue to face a "challenging market". Having acquired Marconi's optical component business in December, it will incur some restructuring costs in the first quarter of 2002. It anticipates its cash burn rate for Q1 to be £20m.