23rd Mar 2016 08:54
LONDON (Alliance News) - Cenkos Securities PLC on Wednesday said its pretax profit and revenue declined in 2015 due to an adverse revenue mix, causing the broker to cut its dividend payout.
Cenkos said pretax profit declined 26% to GBP19.9 million from GBP27.0 million a year earlier, as revenue fell 14% to GBP76.5 million from GBP88.5 million.
Though the total volume of funds raised by Cenkos clients increased year-on-year, revenue was hit by a slight change in the mix of fundraising, with a bias to investment fund tap issues and larger average deal sizes. Cenkos also noted 2014 had been a very strong year, giving a tough comparative for the 2015 numbers.
The biggest deal the firm worked on in 2015 was the IPO of BCA Marketplace PLC, the operator of the British Car Auctions brand with a GBP1.38 billion market capitalisation.
Cenkos will pay a total dividend of 14.0 pence per share for the year, down from 17.0p, though it noted it conducted a share buyback in 2015 equivalent to returning 30.0p per share.
"Despite challenging market conditions since the start of 2016, there continues to be good institutional demand to fund high quality companies and ideas. Since January we have been engaged in a number of significant fund raisings for clients and our current pipeline is satisfactory given the current market environment," said Jim Durkin, Cenkos's chief executive.
Cenkos shares were down 8.3% to 133.00p Wednesday.
By Sam Unsted; [email protected]; @SamUAtAlliance
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