6th Mar 2014 12:58
LONDON (Alliance News) - Shares in Norish PLC were up 6% Thursday morning, after the warehousing and logistics business said its swung to a pretax profit in 2013, and increased revenues, as it shed a number of businesses.
The warehousing company, which serves the food manufacturing, distribution and retailing sectors reported a pretax profit from its continuing operations of GBP763,000 for the financial year ended December 31, 2013, compared with a pretax loss of GBP218,000 a year earlier.
However, including a GBP946,000 loss from discontinued operations, compared with a GBP163,00 profit a year earlier, the group reported a loss for the period of GBP79,000, the same level as in 2012.
"During the year we decided to exit our ambient site at York, as this site was not a part of our future plans for the business. Following the loss of a major customer at our Leeds site, it was decided to exit this site also and put both properties, at Leeds and York, on the market. A sale price of GBP1.8 million has been agreed for the site at York and the sale is expected to conclude before June 30," the company said in a statement.
The group said it has now split the business into three divisions - North West Cold Stores, South East Cold Stores and Commodity Trading.
Revenue for the year from continuing operations increased to GBP22.8 million, considerably higher than the GBP13.6 million in revenues reported in 2012.
The group said revenues from its subsidiary Townview Foods Ltd amounted to GBP11.4 million, and revenues from its continuing temperature controlled business increased to GBP11.2 million, compared with GBP10.1 million for 2012.
It said The North West cold store business performed well against last year, boosted by an increase of pork exports to China.
It said the South East cold store business, performed worse than in 2012, mainly due to increased power costs, although it said it expects these power cost increases will reverse from April.
"Our commodity trading division which we purchased in October 2012 contributed GBP420,000, however this was below expectations as the results were adversely impacted as a result of the Horse Meat crisis," it said.
The group said its net assets increased by GBP200,000 during the year, while its net debt fell by the same amount, stood at GBP7.8 million at year-end. Basic earnings per share increased to 8.4 pence, from a loss of 2.5 pence in 2012.
Norish left its total dividend unchanged from the previous year, at 1.25 cents per share.
Shares in the company were trading 6% higher at 44.00 pence per share before midday Thursday.
By Rowena Harris-Doughty; [email protected]; @rharrisdoughty
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