25th Jun 2019 11:08
(Alliance News) - Engineering services firm Sureserve PLC said Tuesday interim profits surged following strong growth in revenue following a restructure, despite order book falling sharply.
Meanwhile, the firm also announced former Mitie PLC finance executive Peter Smith had been appointed as its new finance chief.
For the six months ended March, pretax profit from continuing operations jumped to GBP1.1 million from a loss of GBP501,000 the year prior. This was after revenue jumped 13% to GBP102.5 million from GBP91.1 million the year before.
In recent years, Sureserve - known as Lakehouse PLC until October - has been restructuring the business to focus on its core Compliance and Energy Services business. In the process, it exited from its historic Construction and Property Services units.
Profit performance was helped by a significant fall in one-off costs during the period. Exceptional costs amounted to GBP1.4 million, entirely due to amortisation of acquired intangible assets. The year prior, one-off charges amounted to GBP2.4 million.
Underlying pretax profit widened 32% to GBP2.5 million from GBP1.9 million the year before.
Order book, however, fell 11% to GBP350.5 million from GBP395.9 million the year prior. Despite this, Sureserve described the order book as "robust" and emphasised it had seen a "high bidding success rate" for new contract wins.
Sureserve Chair Bob Holt described the results as "excellent" with the firm "trading comfortably ahead of the previous year."
"Both our Compliance and Energy business groups showed a significant improvement year on year," Holt added. "It should be remembered that the first half of our year takes into account the winter months where gas in particular incurs significantly higher costs than the summer months. It was pleasing to see our smart meter installation business achieve profitability and we look to the future with a positive view on that business."
Sureserve did not propose an interim dividend, in line with the year prior.
"The results demonstrate that we were well ahead of the comparable period last year and the Board look forward to achieving a successful outcome for the year to September," Holt concluded.
In a separate announcement, Sureserve announced Peter Smith would become chief financial officer of the firm from July 29.
Smith has "widespread and successful" experience across the facilities management and services industries. This includes a recent post as finance director of the Cleaning & Environmental Services unit at Mitie.
Shares in Sureserve were 3.7% higher at 28.00 pence in London on Tuesday.
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