CAPE TOWN, South Africa (BRAIN) — Protective gear maker Leatt Corporation recorded sales of $16.4 million last year, down from $18.3 million the year before. The company recorded a net loss of $455,000 last year.
The company is headquartered in South Africa and its stock is traded on OTCQB market.
Leatt CEO Sean Macdonald said the strong American dollar last year slowed European sales of Leatt's body armor and neck braces. He said sales in the U.S., Australia/Asia and the Middle East increased marginally last year and noted that revenues from helmet sales increased by 12 percent year over year. The company's new apparel and glove ranges for off-road motorcycle and mountain bikes generated $1.1 million in sales.
He said Leatt continued to meet its working capital needs from cash on hand and cash flow from operations. At December 31, 2016, the company had cash and cash equivalents of $1.1 million and there was no long-term debt.
"As we signaled in previous quarters, we expected that our 2016 revenues would be less robust than prior period revenues due to worldwide currency fluctuations, especially the increase in the value of the U.S. dollar against the Euro, the currency of our primary international customers," said Macdonald. "While we expect these conditions to stabilize over time, we are continuously evaluating pricing and marketing strategies globally in order to remain competitive in international markets. Our strategic goal remains to create a comprehensive catalogue of uniquely engineered and designed protective gear that builds on the reputation of our life-saving and award-winning Leatt neck braces."
"We are encouraged by our 2017 performance so far," Macdonald said. "Many of our European distributors had strong sales during the Christmas period and we are now starting to see re-orders to replenish inventories. We continue to fine-tune our network and have appointed new distributors in some European areas and Central America during the first quarter of 2017. We are also aggressively building our bicycle distribution network globally as we grow our bicycle-related pipeline. Furthermore, during the period, we continued to build our sales management and in-store representation in the U.S. market. While we have a tremendous amount of work in front of us, the reception being received by our new products has made for a strong first quarter and is very encouraging for our team."
He said Leatt will begin shipping its DBX 3.0 range of bicycle helmets in the first half this year.
