8th Jun 2016 07:37
LONDON (Alliance News) - Marketing communications company Creston PLC on Wednesday said it swung to a pretax loss in the year to the end of March due to one-off charges, but total revenue grew and like-for-like sales came in flat.
Creston said its pretax loss for the financial year to March 31 was GBP7.6 million, swung from a GBP9.6 million profit a year earlier, after it booked a GBP15.2 million one-off impairment related to lower operating profit growth estimates for its ICM Unlimited and DJM PAN Unlimited businesses.
Stripping out the impairment, headline pretax profit nudged up to GBP10.1 million from GBP10.0 million, as revenue rose 8.0% to GBP82.6 million from GBP76.9 million. Like-for-like sales for the year were broadly flat, Creston said.
Creston said it saw strong growth in new clients and increased services to existing clients, but revenue was impacted by volatility in the budgets of some customers and a weak euro.
Creston declared a final dividend of 3.0 pence, up from 2.9p, taking its total payout up to 4.4p from 4.2p.
"Over the last year we have made good progress against our five year strategic plan and the team has been working hard to integrate the strategy across the Unlimited Group. As a result we have been able to drive another year of improved new business and increased our full service offering for key clients," said Chief Executive Barrie Brien.
"Despite still having work to do, we are looking forward to continuing this progress in the coming year and I believe that we are in a good position to capitalise on the positive work already achieved," he added.
Creston shares were down 1.6% to 90.00p Wednesday.
By Sam Unsted; [email protected]; @SamUAtAlliance
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