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(Alliance News) - Gamma Communications PLC on Tuesday raised its interim payout and retained its confident outlook for the full year, following a robust performance in the first half of 2022.
For the six months ended June 30, the London-based cloud communication services provider posted pretax profit of GBP38.4 million, up 19% from GBP32.4 million the same period a year before.
Adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation rose 13% to GBP51.9 million from GBP46.0 million.
This was on revenue which grew 8% year-on-year to GBP234.7 million from GBP217.4 million. Gamma attributed the strong revenue growth to a solid performance in the UK, with the Indirect business benefiting from data product growth and UCaaS sales, while the Direct business prospered from MS Teams user contract wins.
Meanwhile, in Europe, growth in the German business more than offsetting headwinds in Gamma's Spanish business.
Gamma declared an interim dividend of 5.0 pence per share, up 14% from 4.4p a year prior.
Looking ahead, Gamma said it remains positive about its prospects, due to its strong financial position, allowing the group to continue investing in its product portfolio across its European footprint.
Adjusted Ebitda for 2022 is set to be at the upper half of the market forecast range, which is between GBP102.3 million and GBP106.8 million.
For 2021, adjusted Ebitda was GBP95.4 million. This means the firm expects to report growth of 7.2% to 12% in the year ahead.
"I am pleased to be presenting the first set of results since I took on my new role. Gamma has had a strong first half. Our Direct business in the UK has returned to growth as we had indicated it would once the effects of Covid had worked through. The UK Indirect business continues to be strong with good growth in the new variants of SIP which support MS Teams users. Our European business has increased the number of Cloud seats by 7% despite a challenging economic environment," said Interim Chief Executive Officer Andrew Belshaw.
"We are seeing some effects of inflation in connectivity and hardware costs which we are generally able to pass on to customers. We expect this to continue to increase in the second half and into 2023," Belshaw added.
Shares in Gamma Communications were up 4.8% at 1,121.03 pence on Tuesday in London.
By Dayo Laniyan; dayolaniyan@alliancenews.com
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