County Durham tech manufacturer Filtronic plc has announced a new deal with Elon Musk's SpaceX firm worth £16.8m.
The Sedgefield company, which designs and manufactures products for the aerospace, defence, space and telecoms infrastructure markets, said the new contract with the company will be fulfilled over the next two financial years.
In a short update to shareholders announcing the contract, the board said it is now confident the business will exceed current market expectations for revenue and profit in FY2025 and FY2026. Shares rose more than 10% to 102.2p in early trading following the announcement.
Nat Edington, chief executive officer, said: "We are delighted to have secured this substantial order, which underscores Filtronic's reputation for delivering high-performance RF solutions to our market leading customer. This contract, alongside our growing momentum in strategic markets, provides us with increased confidence in our ability to exceed our growth targets for FY2025 and FY2026."
The deal comes less than a week after the NETPark-based business unveiled first half results showing revenue rose to £25.6m in the six months to the end of November 2024, compared with £8.5m in the same period the year before. Operating profit came in at £6.8m during the period, converting a £400,000 first half loss in 2024.
Filtronic bosses said there is still further growth potential in the low earth orbit market, while hinting that more collaboration with SpaceX was in the pipeline, amid the firm's work on components for the Starlink constellation. The company fist linked up with SpaceX last year in a deal which gave the US rocket giant options to acquire a stake in Filtroni, and it has since led to a series of multimillion-dollar orders, and brought about expansion at Filtronic's NETPark home in County Durham.
The company, which has a base near Leeds and a new design centre in Cambridge, has installed two new production lines in the North East and will move into larger premises at NETPark later this year.
