Focusrite PLC, a global music and audio products group, held its Annual General Meeting and provided a trading update. The company's Content Creation division faced industry-wide market challenges, particularly in Asia and among traditional resellers in the EMEA region. Despite this, the underlying registrations for their key Scarlett products reflect solid ongoing demand, outperforming competitors. The company's Audio Reproduction division's performance and full-year pipeline remain strong. Gross margins have been maintained, and the company is taking actions to ensure costs benefit from the Group's synergies. The company's profit expectations for the full year remain unchanged, with a significant weighting towards the second half, which is expected to include new product launches.
Focusrite remains optimistic about its future prospects and continues to pursue a proactive M&A strategy, focusing on opportunities that enhance earnings, broaden market reach, augment R&D capabilities, and add scale and dynamism to its operations. The recent acquisition of OutBoard is integrating successfully into the Group. The company's brands, including Focusrite, Focusrite Pro, Novation, Ampify, ADAM Audio, Martin Audio, and others, are category leaders in the music-making and audio recording industries. With offices in four continents and a global customer base, the company has a distribution network covering approximately 240 territories.