25th Feb 2016 07:56
LONDON (Alliance News) - Outsourcer Serco Group PLC on Thursday said its pretax loss narrowed significantly in 2015 as the costs of its restructuring eased, but reiterated its guidance for revenue and underlying profit to fall again in 2016.
The FTSE 250-listed company, which has suffered significant writedowns on the value of its contract book in recent years, said its pretax loss narrowed significantly in the year to GBP69.4 million from GBP990.5 million as the severity of the one-off charges it had to book eased substantially.
Revenue fell to GBP3.18 billion from GBP3.60 billion as the group closed out onerous contracts, but Serco said its pipeline of bid opportunities increased by around GBP1.5 billion against the end of 2014 to GBP6.5 billion. Operating costs also fell, broadly in line with the decline in revenue.
Serco reiterated its guidance for 2016, with revenue again set to fall, to around GBP2.8 billion, and its underlying trading profit to decline as a result of the sale of business process outsourcing units and contract attrition.
The company did not pay a dividend for 2015, having paid out 3.10 pence the year earlier, as it continues to reshape the business.
"The business has delivered a much better performance than we expected at the start of the year, which reflects the fact that we are making good progress in the first year of the implementation of our strategy," said Chief Executive Rupert Soames.
By Sam Unsted; [email protected]; @SamUAtAlliance
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