(Alliance News) - Paypoint PLC on Thursday reported a rise in revenue as its recent acquisitions contributed to sales increases across its three divisions.
In the six months that ended September 30, PayPoint's pretax profit slumped 62% to GBP21.0 million from GBP55.0 million in the same period last year.
Last year, PayPoint recorded a GBP29.9 million "exceptional" profit from the GBP30.0 million disposal of its Romanian business.
Pretax profit from continuing operations, excluding exceptional items, crept up 2.1% to GBP22.5 from GBP22.1 million.
The Hertfordshire-based payment services provider's revenue, however, grew 7.4% to GBP75.4 million from GBP70.2 million.
The company said "the transformation of our business continues", reflecting a rebalancing towards growth opportunities and delivering improving returns to shareholders.
Within divisions, Shopping revenue increased 3.2% to GBP30.8 million from GBP29.8 million, driven by the growth of PayPoint One estate, the annual retail price index increase and "enhancements to our retailer and SME propositions". These enhancements include the launch of the new Android terminal in the Handepay cards business.
In the Payments & Banking division, revenue increased 6.1% to GBP25.7 million thanks to a strong performance in the energy sector and continued growth in digital transactions. Nine energy providers signed contracts with PayPoint to deliver the Energy Bills Support Scheme, the company noted.
In the smallest division, E-commerce, revenue increased 46% to GBP3 million. This was the result of "excellent volumes", including a number of weeks reaching over 1 million parcels processed.
The company said the acquisitions of i-movo, Handepay, Merchant Rentals, RSM 2000 and Collect + have made a "strong contribution" to its results.
Earlier this month the company announced the proposed acquisition of Appreciate Group for 33 pence per share in cash and 0.019 of a new PayPoint share for each Appreciate share.
Paypoint said the deal will deliver attractive returns and "broaden the universe that PayPoint serves and strengthens the client and retailer proposition".
The company expects the takeover scheme to become effective in the first half of 2023.
It declared an interim dividend of 18.4 pence per share, up 8.2% against last year's interim dividend.
Chief Executive Nick Wiles said: "This has been a positive half year for the PayPoint Group where we have continued to build momentum across the business and remain confident in delivering further progress in the current year. The acquisitions made over the past two years have made a strong contribution to the results delivered across all three of our business divisions, whilst our continued focus remains on the delivery of our strategic priorities, a strong operational performance and maintaining a tight control of our cost base."
Shares in PayPoint were trading 0.3% higher at 535.61 pence each in London on Thursday morning.
By Chris Dorrell; chrisdorrell@alliancenews.com
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