10th Oct 2024 08:52
(Alliance News) - Volution Group PLC on Thursday said annual profit rose by more than 15% alongside growth in home sales.
The Crawley, England-based energy efficiency and indoor air-quality solutions firm said pretax profit for the financial year that ended July 31 was GBP56.6 million, up 16% from GBP48.8 million last year. Revenue grew 6.0% to GBP347.6 million from GBP328.0 million.
Volution declared a final dividend of 6.2 pence per share, giving a total dividend for the financial year of 9.0p per share. This was up 13% from a total dividend of 8.0p per share in financial 2023.
Sales in the residential market sector rose 17% to GBP105.0 million from GBP89.7 million the year prior, which Volution said was a "huge underpinning factor" in its revenue growth.
It added that its end markets were "generally challenging, with commercial and [original equipment manufacturer] activities quite weak". Sales in the commercial sector fell 6.6% to GBP28.2 million from GBP30.2 million last year, whilst OEM sector sales dropped 36% to GBP15.5 million from GBP24.1 million.
Chief Executive Officer Ronnie George said: "Volution has delivered another strong set of results and made further good progress against our strategic and financial priorities in the year we celebrated our tenth year as a listed company. I am incredibly proud of how, during this time, we have moved from being a largely UK-centric ventilation leader to having a broad-based presence across the UK, Continental Europe and Australasian ventilation markets.
"The further enhanced operating profit margin delivered in the year, against continuing challenging markets, is a testament to our scale, diversification and strong cohesion between the local operating areas, as well as our group-wide technical, procurement and product management functions. We continue to be equally focused on converting profitability into cash, and I was delighted to see another year of excellent cash conversion, well above our 90% target.
"The new financial year has started as anticipated, with both revenue and adjusted operating profit ahead of the same period last year. Also, in an exciting post year-end development, we have announced an agreement to acquire Fantech's ventilation activities in Australia and New Zealand, which would represent our largest acquisition to date by some considerable distance. This, along with the momentum we have across many parts of the business, provides the board with confidence of another year of good progress across the group."
Shares in Volution were down 4.6% at 584.00 pence each in London on Thursday morning.
By Emily Parsons, Alliance News reporter
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