16th Jan 2014 10:40
LONDON (Alliance News) - Tribal Group PLC Thursday said it expects 2013 profits to be better than it previously expected after a strong final quarter of the year, driven by its systems business.
In a statement, the provider of software and services for training in the private and public sectors said it expects both pretax profit, excluding closed businesses and financing items, and its earnings per share to be ahead of previous expectations.
Its said its training software business had continued to make good progress, with its major education management system projects in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada on track. It said the unit had also generated a "healthy" level of new opportunities in the UK and internationally, particularly in the Higher Education market.
Its training services business, meanwhile, performed as it expected, Tribal said in a trading update. It said its performance improvement business had a strong end to the year, with good levels of renewals and new customer wins.
Tribal also said it had cut its net debt to GBP4.6 million by the end of 2013, from GBP9.9 million at the start.
However, its order book declined to GBP129 million by the end of the year, from GBP168 million a year earlier, mainly because contracts it had with the UK education regulator Ofsted matured during the year. Still, it said it is experiencing strong demand in international markets for its education management systems, as well as new opportunities for its quality assurance and performance improvement products.
"Technology is becoming increasingly pervasive throughout our work; this focus is increasingly reflected in the shape of our order book, which continues to provide good underpinning to our revenue expectations for 2014 and beyond," it said.
Analysts were expecting Tribal to report a pretax profit of GBP13.6 million for 2013, and earnings per share pf 11.32 pence, according to consensus data from Morningstar. It had reported an adjusted pretax profit of GBP12.8 million in 2012 and a reported figure of GBP9.97 million. Earnings per share were 10.4 pence, or 11.9 pence on an underlying basis.
Tribal will report its full 2013 results on March 14.
Its shares were up 10.5% at 205.59 pence Thursday morning, one of the biggest movers on the London market.
By Steve McGrath; [email protected]; @stevemcgrath1
Copyright 2014 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Related Shares:
Tribal Grp.