Report by the Board of Directors

Outlook for 2017

Bittium will continue to look for inorganic growth opportunities in all its product and service areas and is prepared to invest in acquisitions that support its growth strategy. The growing need for wireless connectivity, increasingly growing amount of data transfer and the need for secure data transfer create demand for Bittium´s competence, products and product platforms. In a long term Bittium still has good conditions to grow profitably. Bittium aims further at growing net sales based on its products and product platforms. 

Bittium has announced earlier that it targets 10 percent annual growth in net sales and to reach EBIT level 10 percent of net sales in the year 2017 at the latest. The company believes that in the coming years it is able to grow its net sales even more than the earlier announced target, and therefore sets up a target to exceed the annual 10 percent growth target of the net sales. However, Bittium believes, that during the year 2017 it is not yet able reach the targets set for the growth in the net sales and EBIT level. The reason for this is the termination of a significant customer cooperation with a global network equipment manufacturer. According to the information received by Bittium, the net sales from this customer cooperation will end completely during the second quarter of the year 2017. To this extent this kind of extensive and rapid decrease in the services business net sales is impossible to be replaced with other projects in a short term, which effects directly the development of net sales and operating result in 2017. In addition, the operating profit level of the year 2017 is also affected by the planned investments to enable the future growth.

Bittium expects that the net sales in 2017 will be at the same level than in previous year (EUR 64.2 million, in 2016). The operating result is expected to be negative (EUR 2.5 million, in 2016). 

More information about Bittium´s market outlook is presented in the section "Market outlook" in this report.

More information about other uncertainties regarding the outlook is presented in this report in the section "Risks and Uncertainties" and on the company´s internet pages at www.bittium.com.