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Advanced Photonix Fiscal Year Loss Grows On Sales Slump

ANN ARBOR -- Advanced Photonix Inc. (NYSE: API), the Ann Arbor manufacturer of optical and electronic data transmission equipment and terahertz instrumentation, Monday reported a larger loss on a sales slump for the fiscal year ended March 31.

For the year, revenue was $23.7 million, down 20 percent from $30 million the prior year. The company said sales fell in the telecommunications, homeland security and medical markets.

The loss for the year was $4.4 million or 14 cents a share, compared to a loss the prior year of $2.1 million or 7 cents a share.

For the fourth quarter, revenue was $6 million, down from $6.5 million a year earlier. The net loss was $1.1 million or 3 cents a share, unchanged from a year earlier.

The company said its gross profit margin was 35.8 percent of sales in the fourth quarter, up from 34.2 percent a year earlier. Cost reduction efforts and more sales of more profitable products helped improve the rate.

For the year, though, gross profit margin fell to 37.3 percent, down from 40.2 percent in the prior year.

The company's total operating expenses for the quarter were $3.3 million, similar to the fourth quarter last year. As a percent of revenue, total operating expenses were 54.5 percent, up from 49.9 percent for the fourth quarter last year. For the year, total operating expenses were $13.2 million, or 55.9 percent of revenue, compared to $14.5 million, or 49.2 percent of revenue last year.

The company finished the year with $619,000 in cash, down from $3.2 million a year earlier, due primarily to the losses that were funded during the year. Net working capital as of March 31 was $4.9 million and the company had the ability to borrow up to $1.5 million on the Company's line of credit.

"Last year was a difficult year, but we expect to return to growth this coming fiscal year," said Advanced Photonix chairman and CEO Richard Kurtz. "The Thailand flooding in late 2011 continued to impact 100G orders from our customers early in our fiscal year 2013 and we did not succeed getting our new low cost source for a subcomponent to ramp up in volume as needed until after year end. Coupled with a slowdown in China and the fall off of the In-Q-Tel contract work, we saw our top line drop by 20 percent. As we announced in June, the supply chain bottleneck has been solved and we have been able to respond to our customers increased demands for 100G product. Combined with the recent purchase of the operating assets of Silonex, we expect a return to growth with fiscal 2014 sales looking to be higher than this last year by over 35 percent."

To listen to a recording of the conference call discussing the company's results, visit the Investors section of www.advancedphotonix.com.

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