11th Mar 2016 07:20
LONDON (Alliance News) - IT infrastructure services provider Computacenter PLC on Friday said its pretax profit rose as a result of a one-off gain and lower restructuring costs in 2015, though revenue dipped amid continued challenges in France.
The FTSE 250-listed company said pretax profit jumped 66% to GBP126.8 million for the year to the end of December from GBP76.4 million in 2014. The increase was driven by a one-off gain made from the sale of Computacenter's RD Trading recycling subsidiary and from lower restructuring costs related to a redundancy programme in France.
Revenue dipped to GBP3.06 billion from GBP3.11 billion, however, partially due to the weak euro. The group also faced continued sales weakness in France, where it has been exiting businesses and focusing on higher-margin revenue streams, though the country did perform ahead of Computacenter's expectations.
UK revenue grew in the year, though supply chain revenue was flat following a weaker second half, while revenue grew across the board in Germany in constant currencies.
The group said it will pay a second interim dividend of 15.0 pence per share, taking its total payout to 21.4p for 2015 from 19.8p in 2014.
Chief Executive Mike Norris said the company was encouraged by the momentum in its German business and said France should remain stable in 2016, though the chance of any acceleration in its performance in the country was low.
"While it is too early to make any firm commitments on the year as a whole and there is much work to be done, we expect 2016 to be a year of further progress. However, it is worth making clear that the effects referred to above will impact the phasing of our profit delivery and mean that the first half profit is expected to be below that reported for the same period in 2015," Norris added.
By Sam Unsted; [email protected]; @SamUAtAlliance
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