8th Sep 2015 07:40
LONDON (Alliance News) - McBride PLC Tuesday said it swung to a profit in its recently-ended financial year, having suffered a loss the prior year, although revenue declined and it slashed its dividend as part of a dividend policy reset while it works to turn the business around.
The household and personal care products company said it made a GBP2.6 million pretax profit in the year ended June 30, an improvement on the GBP21.3 million pretax loss it made the year before, as it booked lower costs relating to exceptional items and benefited from cost savings.
However, revenue fell 5.4% to GBP704.2 million from GBP744.2 million, which it blamed on the translation of a weaker euro. It said that revenue would have risen 0.3% had currencies stayed constant.
McBride said it will pay a total dividend of 3.6 pence, down from the 5.0p it paid the year before, which it said is part of the resetting of its dividend policy ahead of its transformation plan. "The board will look to increase these payments as the earnings of the group improve ensuring that payments are progressive with earnings growth, taking into account funding availability," it said.
McBride added that its UK restructuring project delivered savings of GBP4.9 million and remains on track to deliver targeted annual savings of GBP12 million by June 2016.
"The group has made a satisfactory start to the new financial year with the benefits of cost reduction programmes evident. The result of our strategy review is being announced today, and we are excited about the opportunities available to the group to utilise its scale more effectively to seek to deliver growth in operating profit margin. We have commenced our transformation plan and the McBride team is now embarking on a period of change to reposition McBride for a more sustainable future," Chief Executive Rik De Vos said in a statement.
Shares in McBride were trading up 2.1% at 122.00p Tuesday morning.
By Karolina Kaminska; [email protected] @KarolinaAllNews
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