10th Mar 2015 08:01
LONDON (Alliance News) - Automotive retailer and distributor Inchcape PLC on Tuesday said its pretax profit declined due to exceptional costs, but the company reported a rise in revenue and hiked its dividend.
FTSE 250-listed Inchcape said its pretax profit for 2014 was GBP255.8 million, down from GBP266.1 million last year due to a GBP47.4 million goodwill impairment charge the company booked on its Russian operations. Stripping out exceptional costs, pretax profit rose to GBP303.2 million from GBP274.6 million.
Revenue rose to GBP6.70 billion from GBP6.52 billion a year earlier, boosted by a 3.5% rise in new car volumes over the year and returns to growth in the Singapore and Greece markets.
The company will pay a final dividend of 13.8 pence, up 18% on the 11.7 pence paid a year earlier. Its total dividend for the year will be 20.1 pence, up 15.5% on the 17.4 pence it paid in 2013.
"The group has a track record of delivering sustainable earnings growth with a high return on capital employed and we believe our distinctive strength across primarily small and medium size markets in both vehicle sales and aftersales will continue to drive consistent returns for our shareholders," said Inchcape Chief Executive André Lacroix.
"We have good visibility across our markets and categories and, notwithstanding an uncertain geopolitical environment in some of our markets, we expect to deliver a robust underlying constant currency performance in 2015," Lacroix added.
By Sam Unsted; [email protected]; @SamUAtAlliance
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