LONDON (Alliance News) - Equiniti Group PLC, a UK outsourcing and technology company, on Tuesday reported a loss in 2015, its maiden set of annual results since becoming a publicly listed company, due to the costs of its initial public offering and debt.
Equiniti maintained the guidance set out at the time of its IPO in October.
"We aim to achieve annual organic revenue growth of 5%, supplemented by further acquisitions, while expanding our margins through our efficiency programme and de-leveraging the group," the company said Tuesday.
Pretax losses widened to GBP71.7 million in 2015 from GBP38.6 million in 2014, Equiniti said in a statement, as the company declared a dividend of 0.68 pence per share, representing an equivalent full-year dividend of 4.08p per share.
Revenue rose by 26% to GBP369.0 million, supported by organic growth of 7.0% and increases across the company's four divisions.
Equiniti's pension solutions arm, which provides administration and payment services, contributed GBP142.5 million of the overall revenue figure. Its investment solutions arm, known for providing share registration services to companies, contributed GBP118.3 million. The intelligent solutions business, which provides technology and specialist outsourcing services, contributed GBP98.9 million of total revenue.
Total operating costs swelled by 33% to GBP358.8 million and net finance costs rose to GBP81.9 million from GBP71.8 million.
Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation rose to GBP86.2 million in 2015, from GBP70.0 million in 2014, excluding GBP32.8 million of costs mainly related to Equiniti's IPO.
Proforma results, which strip out costs relating to the IPO and "normalise" finance costs to reflect Equiniti's new debt structure, showed a pretax profit of GBP19.7 million in 2015, up from GBP18.3 million in 2014.
Net finance costs fell to GBP13.0 million from GBP14.9 million on a proforma basis. Equiniti raised GBP315.0 million in its IPO, and used the money to repay part of its debt.
On Tuesday, Equiniti said net debt fell to GBP246.0 million from GBP458.2 million over the course of 2015, taking leverage down to 2.8 times Ebitda from 6.5 times one year earlier. Leverage was helped by the timing of IPO fees around the company's year end. Adjusting for those fees, net debt was 3.0 times Ebitda at the end of 2015.
The stock was up 2.4% at 162.00 pence on Tuesday morning.
By Samuel Agini; samagini@alliancenews.com; @samuelagini
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