31st May 2018 11:57
LONDON (Alliance News) - CentralNic Group PLC on Thursday reported an increase in annual profit, with substantial revenue growth in its wholesale division, as it progresses talks for a potential merger with KeyDrive SA
CentralNic's pretax profit for 2017 rose 19% to GBP1.4 million from GBP1.2 million in 2016.
CentralNic's - which provides domain names to wholesale, retail and enterprise companies - sai dtotal revenue grew 10% to GBP24.4 million from GBP22.1 million, with its wholesale business contributing GBP4.7 million - up 48% from GBP3.2 million the year before.
Retail revenue grew 9% to GBP15.6 million from GBP14.3 million. The company said its enterprise division made GBP3.0 million through the sale of premium domain names, dropping from GBP3.7 million in 2016.
Despite this growth, the company said it will not be paying a final dividend in 2017 as it continues its expansion.
Mike Turner, chairman of CentralNic, said that the company is planning further acquisitions and has a "plentiful pipeline of targets".
Indeed, CentralNic paid GBP22.6 million in December to acquire SK-NIC AS, which owns the slovakian ".sk" country code domain. This included a GBP12 million term loan and a GBP6 million revolving credit facility.
Turner added that the company's discussions over a potential merger with KeyDrive are "proceeding well".
"Although there can be no certainty that a transaction will occur, the discussions are proceeding well and the board believes that the transaction will take place in the third quarter of 2018," CentralNic said.
Since the deal would constitute a reverse takeover, CentralNic's shares are currently suspended from trading.
Related Shares:
CNIC.L