At Pace Micro Technology's annual general meeting, the chairman referred to the continued growth in turnover from digital TV set top boxes, "albeit at lower margins than previously achieved".

Apart from the UK, business for Pace is coming from the USA, Israel and from Canal plus France, Italy and Poland.

"Whilst we must be cautious about the timing of future broadcaster investment, we believe that Pace can take advantage of market growth and are confident of the outcome for the year", he concluded.

Bradford's other major technology company, Filtronic, has announced a rights issue to raise £71.2m to fund its development and production of new specialised "chips" for mobile phones using gallium arsenide technology, which has significant user benefits over silicon technology. Among other advantages, the new chips provide better handset performance, cheaper construction and lower power usage - so that batteries will last longer.

Filtronic will purchase Fujitsu's redundant high- specification factory at Newton Aycliffe for £13m, spend £22m to equip it, and spend a further £20m on factories in Finland and California. Professor David Rhodes and his team are setting out their stall to benefit from the continuing worldwide growth in mobile phones. The rights issue - offering existing shareholders one new share at 730 pence for every six held - seems likely to be fully taken up.

Although John Foster announced a further loss of £942,000 for the year ending in February, the group appears to have turned the corner, with the reorganised textile business "no longer being a drain on resources".

Discussions with the bankers have been completed, allowing adequate facilities for the group's requirements. Not surprisingly there is no dividend again, but clearly shareholders should be looking forward to a rather more promising future as better returns are made from the group's various properties, and "the directors are currently pursuing a number of options to develop opportunities to enhance shareholder value".

Expect further announcements in due course.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.