LONDON (Alliance News) - Grafenia PLC Monday lowered its total dividend for the year to end-March, as pretax profit declined, hit by declining revenues in its Printing.com businesses.
The printing services company proposed a total dividend of 1.33 pence, down from 2.55 pence a year earlier.
Grafenia posted a pretax profit of GBP755,000, down from GBP891,000, as revenue declined to GBP19.4 million, from GBP20.7 million. It was hit by declines in the UK as franchisees switched to its W3P cloud-based printing software system. The company had 156 franchisees in its Printing.com business, of which 72 switched to W3P.
The company said that new W3P partners had contributed revenue of GBP310,000.
Although the company is seeing momentum in its software-as-a-service offerings, Printing.com continues to struggle, so the company has launched two new initiatives in the hopes of turning this decline and retaining franchisees. The first initiative, Marqetspace, is an online portal to allow buyers and sellers to trade using the W3P system.
The second, Nettl, planned for launch in September, is an extension of the company's main software as a service platform to include websites and webshops to address the broader promotional requirements of small- and medium-sized businesses.
Grafenia said that the process of developing these new initiatives had taken longer than it had hoped, hitting earnings, but that it now believed it was at the point where it could move forward.
"However, given that our printing markets remain competitive and our SaaS initiatives, whilst now revenue generating, are still developing, it is appropriate to caveat our optimism with an element of caution," the company said in a statement.
Grafenia said that trading in the first two months of the current year remained in line with its budget, and ahead of the previous year.
Shares in Grafenia was trading flat at 17.50 pence Monday morning.
By Hana Stewart-Smith; hanassmith@alliancenews.com; @HanaSSAllNews
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