16th Sep 2019 10:27
(Alliance News) - Finsbury Food Group PLC on Monday said organic growth, acquisition of gluten-free bakery Ultrapharm, new business wins, and lower exceptional costs led to a more-than three-fold rise in annual profit.
The cake and bread bakery goods manufacturer also said that it will up its total dividend for the year to June 29 by 6.1% to 3.5 pence per share. Final dividend for the period stood at 2.34p.
London-listed shares in Finsbury Food were up 8.4% at 71.00 pence each in morning trade.
The company recorded pretax profit of GBP13.6 million for financial 2019, up sharply from GBP4.5 million the year before. This was primarily due to a big drop in non-recurring costs, mainly site closure, impairment and acquisition costs, to GBP1.2 million from GBP13.1 million a year ago.
Stripping out exceptional costs, pretax profit stood at GBP15.9 million, down 11% from GBP17.8 million. Adjusted operating profit margins fell to 5.3% from 5.9%.
Annual group revenue rose 3.8% year-on-year to GBP315.3 million, up 4.0% excluding revenue from closed bakeries and acquired businesses.
Finsbury Chief Executive Officer John Duffy said: "In what has been a continued challenging market environment, our sales growth and increased dividend demonstrates our ability to navigate more challenging times and our continued confidence in the prospects of the group. Our achievements have been underpinned by our relentless focus on investment, efficiency and innovation, alongside our ability to harness the growth available from premium, healthy and authentic on-trend innovation."
In terms of outlook, Finsbury said it remains confident that the strong second-half performance will continue into the year ahead, as the core business continues to perform well with strong first quarter growth to date, outperforming Finsbury's respective markets.
The company is anticipating a significant reduction in capital spend going forward as it said it continues to drive further efficiencies from new systems and processes and utilise additional capacity.
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