14th Oct 2014 07:42
LONDON (Alliance News) - Matchtech Group PLC Tuesday reported a 20% rise in pretax profit in its last financial year, as the company benefited from revenue growth and improved margins in its professional services and engineering divisions.
In a statement, the engineering and professional services recruitment company said it made a GBP11.9 million pretax profit in the year ended July 31, compared with GBP9.9 million in the prior year. Net fee income, otherwise known as revenue less contractor payroll costs, grew by 17% to GBP45.0 million, while revenue grew by the slower rate of 10% to GBP451.6 million.
The reason for the lower growth in revenue than net fee income was an increase in contract margin to 7.5% from 6.8%, according to Chief Financial Officer Tony Dyer, as Matchtech focuses more on new contingency business rather than large, lower-margin framework contracts.
Professional services revenue grew to GBP140.0 million from GBP115.4 million, while engineering revenue rose to GBP311.6 million from GBP293.5 million.
"There remains very strong demand in the UK and worldwide for skilled engineers and this demand is increasing as the global economy recovers and manufacturing output rises. The group is ideally placed to benefit from these trends due to our niche focus within engineering and technology, market leading position and balanced business model of contract and permanent recruitment," Chief Executive Adrian Gunn said in a statement.
"We therefore continue to invest to accelerate the on-going medium term success of the business particularly focusing on increasing our consultant headcount within engineering in the first half of [the new financial year]," Gunn said.
The CEO added that the new financial year has begun well, and that he is confident of "significant" progress.
Matchtech increased its full-year dividend to 20.00 pence from 18.00p.
Matchtech shares were Tuesday up 0.5% at 572.00p.
By Samuel Agini; [email protected]; @samuelagini
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