Hornby PLC on Thursday said poor sales performance prevented targeted annual revenue growth.

Hornby shares fell by 9.3% at 20.40 pence each in London on Thursday morning.

The Margate-headquartered toy manufacturing company said in the year ended March 31, it swung to a pretax loss of £5.9 million from a pretax profit of £583,000 a year prior.

This relates to higher selling and marketing costs of GB11.4 million, which grew by 30% from the year before. Meanwhile, distribution costs increased 17% to £8.2 million in financial 2022.

Revenue grew slightly by 2.6% to £55.1 million from £53.7 million, but was around 10% behind management expectations, Hornby said. This was the result of ‘disappointing sales’ in the October-December period.

The company declared no dividend for financial 2023, unchanged from a year prior.

Looking ahead, Hornby said with its current cost base, it expects to achieve a higher level of revenue, and is targetting high, single-digit or low double-digit revenue growth in the year ahead.

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