(Alliance News) - Aquila Services Group PLC on Friday said it will not pay a final dividend for financial 2020 as it posted a significant dive in profits.
Shares in the management consulting services provider were untraded on Friday morning, last quoted at 26.50 pence each and down 19% from the start of the year.
For its financial year ended March 31, Aquila posted pretax profit of GBP178,000, down 71% from GBP609,000 recorded for financial 2019. This was despite revenue rising 4.0% to GBP8.0 million from GBP7.7 million.
The deterioration in profit was attributed to the costs of a restructuring implemented to cope with the Covid-19 pandemic. Administrative expenses rose to GBP1.6 million from GBP1.3 million, with that amount including redundancy costs of GBP186,000, GBP51,000 from the legal cost of acquisitions compared to zero the year before, and GBP105,000 in costs attributed to its existing share options.
No final dividend was declared in an effort to conserve cash, taking the total payout for the year to 0.30p, down from 0.89p the year prior.
Looking ahead, Chair Derek Joseph said: "We have been diversifying our business activities within Altair, updating and expanding our transformation offering, growing and strengthening our technical teams to support clients with their compliance and cladding issues. The continuing expansion of Altair International and teams developing new products will provide increasing revenues in future years. We do not know if the crisis is over yet though the current easing of lockdown is promising. We are looking forward with confidence to restarting our growth agenda and again generating increasing returns for shareholders."
The Altair business provides support to clients in the housing and regeneration sectors.
As at the end of March, the Aquila Services had cash of GBP828,000.
By Ife Taiwo; ifetaiwo@alliancenews.com.
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