Scanpower chief executive Lee Bettles, left, with company chairman, Allan Benbow.
Despite a stand-down from working in the Powerco network area hitting its bottom line, Dannevirke community-owned company Scanpower is able to deliver a $300 discount to its customers - up from the $250 paid last year.
At the Scanpower Customer Trust annual meeting, company chairman Allan Benbow, summed up the year, as "a mixed bag".
"From a financial point of view, it's been a very challenging year, but the team have responded pretty well," he said.
Benbow said the real challenge had been the "hiccup" on the Powerco network.
"It's a year which is good to have behind us and we're looking forward," he said.
Scanpower had been involved in a near-miss public safety incident which significantly reduced it's earning capability for the last five months of the financial year.
However, an investigation into the incident proved inconclusive as to whether Scanpower was at fault.
"Changes have been made and you always learn from these experiences," Benbow said.
"Ultimately, while this has come at a financial cost, our contracting business is now more robust and well positioned to accommodate new growth going forward."
And Scanpower's chief executive Lee Bettles said the staff involved in the near miss weren't standing around, working instead on the local network.
"Rather than revenue gathering, we doubled our efforts on our local network, carrying out twice as much work as planned," he said.
Scanpower spent $2.57 million replacing and upgrading network assets - more than was originally budgeted - after the decision to deploy three work crews from the contracting division to the local network for the five-month period of the stand-down from Powerco.
Significantly more asset replacement work was completed, including 396 pole changes, against an initial plan for 200, and 64 transformer changes.
But the prospect of having Intrepid Semiconductor, owned by San Francisco-based Randy Crockett, based at Scanpower's Oringi site is now history.
In 2015 Intrepid entered into a lease of the former freezing works boning room at Oringi as a base for its diffusion plant - part of its enormous semi-conductor empire.
Oringi was to be the site where the wafers, on which diodes (chips) would be constructed and Intrepid planned to have 50 furnaces in Dannevirke, using two megawatts of power, with an energy bill between $250,000 and $300,000 a month.
"Intrepid's lease finished at the end of July, but we do have other things in the melting pot," Benbow said.
Bettles said Scanpower had a "pretty rapid growth in its contracting work."
"But we do need to have time to take stock and have improved management systems and ultimately emerge with a stronger company," he said.
And with debt under 15 per cent of equity, Benbow said Scanpower has a very strong balance sheet.
But the company's earnings fell 28 per cent short of target, which was a disappointing outcome, Benbow and Bettles said in their annual report.
The primary drivers were a $4.1 million fall year-on-year operating revenues and an unexpected write down of $201,545 in the value of Scanpower's property investment portfolio.
Scanpower's power line contracting division had the most significant fall in revenue for the year, with revenue of $7.66 million, which was $3.59m less than in 2017.
This was as a result of the completion of the Peka Peka Expressway in July last year. This project had contributed $5.2m in revenue over the prior two-year period.
Also contributing to the revenue fall was the unexpected general downturn in market demand in several regions Scanpower operated in during the latter half of the year and the stand-down from working in the Powerco network also significantly reduced earning capacity.
However, Scanpower has recently secured the street lighting and electrical enabling contracts for the Peka Peka to Otaki Expressway project, providing a substantial boost in the coming year.
Beetles told the meeting these projects would contribute $6m to the company's revenue stream.