11th Sep 2014 09:27
LONDON (Alliance News) - Stilo International PLC shares dropped heavily in early trade on Thursday after the group said its pretax profit and revenue fell in the first half, though the company said the fall would be offset in the second half and said it would pay an interim dividend.
Shares in the company, which provides XML content processing technology and cloud content conversion services, were down 18.8% to 3.25 pence in early trade, making it the worst performing stock on the AIM All-Share index.
Stilo said pretax profit in the six months to June 30 nearly halved to GBP39,000, from GBP72,000 a year earlier, as revenue fell to GBP617,000 from GBP733,000 in 2013.
Stilo said the fall in sales was down to a fall in OmniMark content conversion software licence sales, which it expects to be offset by increased sales of its Migrate cloud XML content conversion service in the second half. The group also said it took a hit to the tune of GBP430,000 from adverse foreign currency effects.
The company said it has secured new customers for the Migrate solution and has made progress on the development of its AuthorBridge XML web authoring solution for large enterprises. It is planning a general release of AuthorBridge in 2015.
Despite the profit fall, the company said it would pay an interim dividend of 0.03 pence per share, having paid no dividend in the same period last year.
"Sales decreased slightly during the period, primarily due to a reduction in OmniMark software license sales, which are expected to be offset by increased Migrate sales in the second half of 2014," said David Ashman, Chairman of Stilo.
Ashman added the company has a "healthly" cash position and said the business outlook is "encouraging".
By Sam Unsted; [email protected]; @SamUAtAlliance
Copyright 2014 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Related Shares:
Stilo