21st May 2019 09:16
LONDON (Alliance News) - Big Yellow Group PLC on Tuesday reported a fall in its annual profit hurt by lower gains on property revaluation, despite higher revenue and occupancy rates.
For the year ended March 31, the FTSE 250 self storage provider posted pretax profit of GBP126.9 million, down 5% on last year's GBP134.1 million.
Revenue rose 7% year-on-year to GBP125.4 million from GBP116.6 million, while costs remained broadly flat.
A GBP58.9 million gain on the revaluation of investment properties, lower compared to GBP71.6 million gained last year, hurt the company's profitability.
At the end of the year, Big Yellow's closing occupancy rate rose 1.9 percentage points to 82.4% from 80.5%. Looking at the future, Big Yellow said it remains focused on achieving a 90% occupancy rate.
"We have delivered another year of growth, with revenue up 7% and adjusted profit before tax up 10% year-on-year. Although activity levels in the final quarter were impacted by consumer uncertainty in the build-up to the UK's original proposed exit date from the EU, we are pleased to have delivered further improvements in rate and occupancy over the year as a whole," Chair Nicholas Vetch said.
He added: "It has taken us time to build a sustainable pipeline of new stores. That is now accomplished and will provide a steady increase in capacity over the next few years. We will continue to add to this pipeline as sites become available, albeit the supply of appropriate property is limited. These new stores will make a significant contribution to future revenue growth, enhancing the performance we anticipate being generated by the existing operating platform."
The storage provider upped its total dividend 8% to 33.2 pence per share from 30.8p paid to shareholders a year ago. This was after proposing a final 16.5p dividend.
Big Yellow shares were trading up 0.5% at 1,060.00p each.
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