14th Mar 2019 09:34
LONDON (Alliance News) - Shares in marketing services firm Kin & Carta PLC fell sharply Thursday as interim profit and revenue continued to struggle, despite the firm holding firm on its dividend.
Shares in Kin & Carta were 8.5% lower at 86.06 pence on Thursday.
For the six months ended January, pretax loss improved to GBP1.6 million from GBP19.3 million the year prior. This was despite revenue falling 4.9% to GBP87.2 million from GBP91.7 million the year before.
Profit performance was held back by GBP11.4 million in exceptional charges during the period. Of these, GBP5.2 million were related to additional pension charges and GBP5.0 million for costs related to acquisitions, with the remainder associated with restructuring costs.
Adjusted pretax profit - excluding these exceptional items - narrowed 4.8% to GBP8.0 million from GBP8.4 million the year prior.
Kin & Carta was known as St Ives PLC until October 2018.
"During the first six months we have both added new clients and expanded existing client relationships, whilst at the same time rolling out our central sales and marketing functions to accelerate growth," Kin & Carta Chief Executive Officer John Schwan said.
Kin & Carta proposed a 0.65 pence per share interim dividend, unchanged on the year prior.
"We are continuing to reposition our Strategy and Communications pillars to better align them with our digital transformation focus," Schwan added. "We are also deepening our software partnerships with Pivotal and Google Cloud which, coupled with the other initiatives we are undertaking across the company, will position us to accelerate our pace of growth in the future".
For the second half of the year, Kin & Carta does not anticipate revenue for its Strategy and Communication units to decline and expects Innovation unit revenue to show "good growth".
In the first half, Strategy revenue fell 8% and Communications revenue by 14% on a like-for-like basis. Meanwhile, the Innovation unit saw 18% like-for-like growth.
Adjusted pretax profit for the remainder of the year is expected to be in line with company expectations.
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