24th Oct 2018 09:10
LONDON (Alliance News) - Photo-Me International PLC said Wednesday its trading in the first five months of the year have been in line with expectations, leading the company to maintain its guidance for the full year.
Shares in Photo-Me International were up 10% Wednesday morning at 109.95 pence each.
Photo-Me will hold its annual general meeting today the restructuring of its Japanese subsidiary has been completed.
The company said it took "decisive action" to "re-align activities" in a "highly competitive" market. Photo-Me believes its initiatives are "becoming evident earlier than initially expected", and it is now "confident" the subsidiary will return to growth in the 2019 financial year, ending April.
The photo booth and launderettes operator said its Japanese functions have been streamlined with unprofitable machines being removed. New units have been deployed with a "significantly" lower production cost and will have a 35% faster return on investment.
Photo-Me said its deployment of encrypted photo ID upload technology has "continued to progress well", with 2,700 photo booths in the UK now enabled for UK passport renewals.
The company is targeting the deployment of 4,000 enabled photo booths by the end of December.
In France, "more than" 80% of the company's photo booths in the country have been upgraded with secure photo ID transfer technology for driving licence renewals, with the technology expected to be deployed in all of its photo booths by the end of the year.
Photo-Me is is "advanced discussions" with the Dutch government to deploy the same technology in the country.
The company said it is on-track to deploy its target of 6,000 laundry units by 2020.
Photo-Me expanded its Laundry services beyond UK with the acquisition of Spanish company La Wash, which is expected to deliver a GBP700,000 contribution in the current financial year.
The Laundry operations division expansion of its Revolution brand continued "strongly".
The company's Kiosk division performed "as expected", Photo-Me said the division will be profitable.
Photo-Me is trialling a "banking booth" in Paris, which will provide front-end retail banking services. The pilot is expected before the end of October and it is partnered with Belgian fintech company Anytime.
For the year to the end of April, Photo-Me reported pretax profit of GBP50.2 million on revenue of GBP229.8 million.
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