24th Nov 2016 08:12
LONDON (Alliance News) - Payment services provider PayPoint PLC declared the first of its additional dividends in its interim results on Thursday, as its profit climbed but revenue declined slightly in the first half.
FTSE 250-listed PayPoint reported a pretax profit of GBP24.7 million for the six months to September 30, climbing from GBP3.2 million the prior financial year. The company's operating profit for the period, stripping out impairments and disposals, was GBP24.2 million, compared to GBP21.7 million year-on-year.
Revenue for PayPoint during the period fell slightly to GBP101.7 million from GBP102.8 million.
PayPoint proposed an interim dividend per share of 15.0 pence, hiked from 14.2p in 2015. An additional dividend of 12.2p per share was also also declared, as one third of the first GBP25 million of additional annual dividends that the company previously announced it will begin to pay.
The company said that its retail network transaction volumes in the period fell by 1.9% to 307.1 million, due to a decline in UK bill and general, and top-up transactions. However mobile payments business transaction volumes increased by 28% to 30.0 million.
"Overall results are in line with our expectations. As set out in our last full year results announcement, this year is proving to be pivotal as we change the focus of the organisation towards our retailers. In the first half, the commercial trial of our new PayPoint One terminal and Core EPoS were successfully concluded with the official launch in September. The platform has been well received and will enable us to drive further growth in retail services which is central to our strategy," said Dominic Taylor, chief executive.
"Looking ahead to the second half, we expect to rollout PayPoint One to achieve around 4,000 sites by the end of the financial year, to develop Advanced EPoS and to step up our installations of ATMs and card payment, requiring increased costs as expected, to deliver our full year results. Trading since 30 September has been in line with our expectations," added Taylor.
Shares in PayPoint were up 1.7% at 1,058.00p early Thursday.
By Adam Clark; [email protected]
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