17th May 2018 11:11
LONDON (Alliance News) - Supply chain services firm Wincanton PLC on Thursday reported a decline in its full year profit on restructuring costs though it still increased its annual dividend.
On a statutory basis, Wincanton's pretax profit for the year to March fell 17% to GBP37.9 million, due to a GBP6.2 million hit from exceptional items instead of a GBP6.1 million gain in its prior year.
These exceptional items primarily included restructuring costs of GBP8.2 million. The restructuring programme was within its Industrial & Transport sector and its support functions, and was mainly made up of the exit of people and associated property costs.
On an underlying basis, removing these exceptionals, pretax profit increased 12% to GBP46.4 million while revenue rose 4.8% year-on-year to GBP1.17 billion.
Wincanton is to pay a 6.63 pence final dividend, taking its full year payout to 9.9p, compared to 9.1p in its previous year.
Wincanton said it had had a "solid" year with revenue growth driven by organic growth with existing customers, the cross-selling of other services, as well as new customers brought on board.
The company said its Retail & Customer business, which makes up just over half of its revenue, had a strong year, growing revenue by 6.5% and underlying operating profit by 15%. However, Industrial & Transport was more challenging, with underlying operating profit down 12% despite revenue growth of 2.4%.
Looking forward, Wincanton said it is well-positioned and action taken over the period to reduce costs was "important" for future growth.
Chief Executive Adrian Colman commented: "During the year we have successfully grown our business as we have driven our key focus markets of retail eFulfilment and the construction sector.
"We have also taken action to reposition the cost base and capacity in some of our transport operations and support functions to address the trading challenges we faced within Industrial & Transport in the year and to ensure our business is competitively positioned going forward."
Shares were 3.3% higher on Thursday at a price of 274.65 pence each.
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