Precision engineer Renishaw raises full-year forecasts again

(Adds details, analyst comment, share movement)

Jan 29 (Reuters) - Renishaw Plc (LSE: RSW.L - news) , a British precision engineering company, raised its full-year revenue and profit forecast for the second time in a month after posting a 36 percent jump in first-half revenue, helped by big orders from the Asia-Pacific region.

The company has reported strong results over the past few quarters, which some analysts have in the past linked to the launch of new products from Apple Inc (NasdaqGS: AAPL - news) .

Contract manufacturers are believed to use Renishaw's tools, including precision measurement and calibration systems, to make Apple products.

Apple on Tuesday reported record sales of big-screen iPhones in the holiday shopping season and a 70 percent rise in China sales.

The company said revenue from the Far East (Kuala Lumpur: 5029.KL - news) had risen 90 percent in the first half to 112.4 million pounds. It added that there were large orders for its machine tool products from a number of Far East customers particularly in the consumer electronics markets.

"We assumed mainly Foxconn for Apple products but Samsung may also be on board," Investec (LSE: INVP.L - news) analyst Michael Blogg said, referring to the orders in the company's Metrology division.

Renishaw, which makes machine tool probes and gauges, now expects a full-year pretax profit of 130 million-150 million pounds ($197-$227 million) and revenue of 480 million pounds to 510 million pounds.

For the year ending June 30, the company earlier expected a pretax profit of 120 million-140 million pounds and revenue of 465 million-495 million pounds.

Renishaw's profit more than doubled to 56.6 million pounds in the six months ended Dec. 31.

The strong revenue growth trend of the first half was expected to continue into the second half, Renishaw said.

Shares (Berlin: DI6.BE - news) in the company pared early gains and were down 0.9 percent at 2308.73 pence at 0902 GMT.

N+1 Singer analysts hinted at raising their forecasts for Renishaw's FY2015 but were cautious about FY2016 as they expected "irregular orders related to Apple" to drop out of the sales line. ($1 = 0.6599 pounds) (Reporting by Roshni Menon in Bengaluru; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier)