7th Aug 2019 09:26
(Alliance News) - FTSE 250-listed defence engineer Ultra Electronics Holdings PLC boosted its interim dividend Wednesday after profit, revenue and orders grew in a "solid" start to the year.
For the six months ended June, pretax profit almost doubled to GBP37.9 million from GBP20.0 million the year prior. This was after revenue rose 10% to GBP387.1 million from GBP350.5 million the year before.
Profit performance was helped by a steep fall in one-off charges. In particular, acquisition intangibles impairments charges fell on the year prior as well as a GBP2.6 million gain booked on derivatives, compared to a GBP5.2 million loss the year prior.
Underlying pretax profit - excluding one-off items - widened 6.7% to GBP46.5 million from GBP43.6 million the year prior.
"It has been a solid start to the year," Chief Executive Simon Pryce said. "Ultra is benefitting from strong US defence spend and increased demand on existing programmes. This helped us to deliver good order book and revenue growth and improved financial performance in the first half."
The order book grew 4.2% to GBP1.01 billion from GBP969.2 million the year prior. Ultra proposed a 15.0 pence per share interim dividend, up 2.7% from 14.6p the year before.
"We have positive momentum into the second half and remain confident that 2019 will be a year of good progress for Ultra," Pryce added. "Importantly, we have won good positions on a number of key new programmes which have significant long term potential."
Shares in Ultra were 6.2% higher at 1,971.00 pence in London on Wednesday.
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