Revenues for the Cambridge-based manufacturer in the six months to 30 June 2013 rocketed to £67.2m (H1 2012: £37.9m), with growth led by strong demand for Xaar's ceramic tile digital printing technology, particularly in China, which has around 46% of the global ceramic printing market.
Chief executive Ian Dinwoodie said he expected the company's growth to begin to slow down in the coming year. "We've grown by 150% over the past three years; it has been huge. Now we'll take a couple of years to draw breath, targeting a more meaningful growth rate of perhaps around 10%," he said.
Product sales across the company were £63.9m (H1 2012: £34.3m) with Xaar's ceramic applications the key driver.
Dinwoodie said that the company had experienced 36% growth of sales into the packaging market through digital label printing. The division generated £8.3m, accounting for 12% of H1 revenue.
Company headcount, which now stands at more than 700, has increased by almost 50% since 30 June 2012.
Dinwoodie said there would be further "significant hiring" to fulfil its ongoing R&D on existing and new products.
"We are forecasting very robust numbers in the coming years, which will enable us to create a much larger company once we get the thin-film piezo technology (P4) product rolling out," Dinwoodie said.
He added that development of the P4 was on track with the first revenues expected in 2016.
In the wide-format graphics market the company made something of a comeback after losing market share in recent years, achieving revenue growth of 28%; and with the new Xaar 501 GS10 scheduled for release later this year, Dinwoodie expected that to continue over the next two to three years.
Manufacturing at Xaar's Huntingdon facility is at full capacity and the company plans to invest around £30m of capex in 2013/2014, in "further specialised assets to meet market demand".
Looking ahead, Dinwoodie said he expected demand for ceramic tile technology to stabilise. "But there are other ceramic processes that could possibly be digitalised and we are exploring those.
"There will be more adoption of inkjet into packaging and our decorative laminate application. We expect to see results over the next couple of years.
"Based on our thin-film technology we'll be looking at further forms of packaging, textiles and book printing and we'll expect these to kick in between 2016 through to 2022."
Interim dividend, which will be paid on 4 October, increased to 2.5p per share (H1 2012: 1p per share).
Share price was 828.5p at the time of writing, almost four times its value last year, with a 52-week high of 898p (low: 227p)
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