26th Feb 2014 09:54
LONDON (Alliance News) - The Vitec Group PLC Wednesday said its full-year 2013 pretax profit increased significantly on lower charges related to its ongoing restructuring, but its underlying pretax profit fell as revenues dropped during the period.
The company, which produces equipment and services for the broadcasting, entertainment and photographic industries, said its pretax profit increased 27% to GBP20.4 million in 2013 from GBP16.1 million in 2012. However its underlying pretax profit fell 1.7% to GBP35.6 million from GBP36.2 million, as revenues fell 8.7% to GBP315.4 million from GBP345.3 million.
Vitec said its underlying figures do not include restructuring costs and charges associated with acquired businesses, while its underlying pretax profit figures are also before the receipt of payments from some disposals.
The company said its revenues fell due to challenging market conditions and the absence of the London Olympics, which contributed roughly GBP10 million in sales during 2012.
However, the company said it remains focused on cash generation and that changes in working capital showed a gain of GBP8.6 million, compared with a GBP14.9 million loss the previous year.
Vitec added that, following the disposal of its staging business in 2012 for a loss of GBP6.4 million, restructuring costs in 2013 were GBP11.4 million but charges associated with acquired businesses fell to GBP3.8 million from GBP13.7 million in 2012.
As such, the company said its underlying operating profit increased 0.5% to GBP39.5 million from GBP39.3 million but its total operating profit fell 5.1% to GBP24.3M from GBP25.6 million.
Despite this, Vitec increased its full-year dividend by 4.5% to 23.0 pence by raising its final dividend by 4.4% to 14.1 pence.
The company said its outlook for 2014 remains positive after its restructuring leaves a more streamlined business, but added that foreign exchange movements, particularly from the US dollar to the Japanese yen, are expected to hurt results moving forward.
Vitec shares fell 3.7% to 645.62 pence Wednesday.
By Tom McIvor; [email protected]; @TomMcIvor1
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