10th Aug 2015 07:06
LONDON (Alliance News) - Transport company Rotala PLC on Monday posted a fall in pretax profit, in line with lower revenue, due to one-off costs and on the back of declining revenue from its contracted services business, which was not quite offset by better commercial revenue.
The company said its pretax profit for the six months to the end of June was GBP894,000, down from GBP990,000 a year earlier, primarily due to it booking GBP151,000 in exceptional administrative costs.
Rotala said its contracted services revenue fell by 19% year-on-year in the half, driven by the conversion of its services provided for the University of the West of England to commercial bus services and by the end of its contract with British Airways, both in the second half of 2014.
Rotala said contract services are a decreasing portion of its revenue, in line with its strategic plans, and said it intends to continue its focus on commercial revenue, which is says it has more control over.
Commercial services revenue in the half was up 8%, driven by the University of the West of England conversion and a positive impact to the changes made by Centro, the transport authority of the West Midlands, to their Swift travel cards.
Charter services revenue was down by 49%, primarily due to the loss of the British Airways contract which also hit its contracted services revenue.
The group said it would pay a dividend of 0.725 pence per share, up from 0.65 pence.
Shares in Rotala were untraded after the open on Monday, having last traded at 68.90 pence.
By Sam Unsted; [email protected]; @SamUAtAlliance
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