21st Mar 2018 12:28
LONDON (Alliance News) - Personal Group Holdings PLC on Wednesday lifted its dividend payment despite a drop in annual profit and said it looks forward to 2018 with confidence.
The employee benefits and insurance services provider said pretax profit fell in 2017 to GBP9.5 million from GBP10.5 million the prior year, as revenue dropped to GBP45.2 million from GBP53.6 million, impacted by delayed roll out of salary sacrifice offering to Royal Mail Group.
Personal Group said its SaaS segment revenue rose 77% to GBP2.7 million from GBP1.5 million the year before. However, this was more than offset by revenue from the Let's Connect employee benefits division, which nearly halved to GBP11.3 million from GBP20.1 million in 2016.
The company's insurance business revenue also declined 1.6% to GBP30.7 million from GBP31.2 million, reflecting the rundown and transfer of revenues from the sale of the company's PMI business to AXA.
Despite the decline in group's profitability, Personal Group said it is in a "uniquely strong" position and confident in 2018. The company finished the year with GBP16.2 million in cash, up from GBP12.6 million in had the year before.
The group increased its total dividend by 3.2% to 22.7 pence, from 22.0p it paid prior year.
Personal Group Chief Executive Mark Scanlon said: "2017 was a strong year across much of the group's operations, which is reflected in the EBITDA [Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization] of GBP10.8 million which was marginally ahead of current market expectations. This performance again demonstrates the strength of the underlying business and was despite the transient issue of the HMRC review into Salary Sacrifice, which delayed sales at our PG Let's Connect business into 2018."
The stock was up 1.7% at 383.50 pence per share on Wednesday.
Related Shares:
Personal Group
