Bookham losses before exceptionals

Q2 2001: �13.4m Q1 2001: �10.1m Q2 2000: �8.2m

The company said the reduction was "consistent with the well-publicised downturn and inventory corrections throughout the industry".

Major customers including UK networking vendor Marconi and Japanese manufacturer Fujitsu, each of which has its own problems, scaled back their purchases to minimal levels during the quarter from 42% of Bookham's sales in the previous period.

As a result, Nortel Networks, Bookham's biggest client, increased its share of Bookham revenues to 70%, with 68% coming from a single contract for mini-DILs, a type of laser used in fibre-optic networks.

Warnings galore

The results came as little surprise after months of profits warnings and dire predictions from across the sector, and were in line with the company's guidance.

Already this month the networking business has seen further heavy losses for US communications companies Lucent Technologies and JDS Uniphase.

JDS turned in what is thought to be the US's worst ever fiscal year loss of $50.6bn, while Lucent announced it was chopping a further 15,000-20,000 jobs on top of the 10,000 it had already earmarked.

And in the UK, Marconi saw its share price halve in a single day and lost its chief executive designate after it owned up to a 50% fall in operating profits and warned of a further 4,000 job losses.

Bookham, in turn, said it planned to go on reducing costs to slow the rate at which it burns through its remaining �215.2m cash pile.

It said it was using the money to invest in new product development.