11th Jun 2015 07:00
LONDON (Alliance News) - Halma PLC Thursday said it expects to make "further progress in the year ahead" as it posted a small decline in pretax profit for its recently ended financial year.
The safety, health and environmental technology company posted a pretax profit of GBP133.6 million for the 52 weeks to March 28, compared to GBP138.7 million for the 52 weeks to March 29 2014, as a rise in revenue to GBP726.1 million from GBP676.5 million was offset by exceptional costs of GBP20.0 million.
On an adjusted basis, stripping out amortisation, acquisition costs, profit or loss on the sale of operations and the closure of future benefit accrual of its defined benefit pension plans, pretax profit rose to GBP153.6 million from GBP140.2 million.
Revenue rose 4% in the US, 8% in the UK and 2% in Mainland Europe. Outside of these regions revenue rose 16% to GBP197 million from GBP170 million. In terms of sectors, the strongest growth came from the process safety sector, and whilst the environmental and analysis sector delivered a disappointing performance overall it saw a much improved second half, Halma said.
Halma proposed a final dividend of 7.31 pence, taking its total dividend for 11.96 pence, up from 11.17 pence a year before.
The company has reorganised its operations into four market sectors and shuffled its executive board to match these sectors. Halma said this reorganisation has gone "extremely well". It acquired three businesses in the process safety, infrastructure safety and medical sectors totalling GBP84 million during the year.
Halma highlighted a "strong pipeline of potential acquisitions" at the start of its new financial year.
"Changes made to our organisation in April 2014 mean that, in the longer term, each of our four sectors has the potential to grow to become the size of the whole of Halma today, through continued and disciplined execution of our well-proven growth strategy. We expect to make further progress in the year ahead," said Chief Executive Andrew Williams in a statement.
By Hana Stewart-Smith; [email protected]; @HanaSSAllNews
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