LONDON (Alliance News) - KCOM Group PLC said Tuesday that profit in the first half of its financial year fell due to a reduction in revenue.
For the six months to September 30, the company reported a drop of 4% in its pretax profit to GBP12.8 million from GBP13.0 million a year prior. Revenue fell 5% year-on-year to GBP142.0 million from GBP143.4 million.
The company said it experienced a good performance in Hull & East Yorkshire, where full-fibre deployment remains on target to be available by March 2019.
However, during the six-month period, trading was "poor" in national business segments driven by a revenue decline in National Network Services, due to continuing churn and broadly flat revenue in Enterprise reflecting disappointing order intake performance.
"The strong performance in Hull & East Yorkshire is expected to continue during the second half of the year, supported in part by the launch in early December of a new unlimited fibre broadband portfolio for consumer customers," the firm said.
It added: "While we have started to take action to address some of the issues in our national segments, we anticipate that the trading performance in Enterprise and National Network Services will remain challenging during the second half of the year and that this will continue into next year."
The company slashed its interim dividend in half to 1.0 pence per share from 2.0p paid to shareholders a year ago. This follows the company's decision to cut its dividend payment to not less than 3.0p per share for the 2019 financial year from 6.0p previously.
KCOM shares were up 2.6% at 59.20 pence on Tuesday.
