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LONDON (Alliance News) - Maintel Holdings PLC Monday raised its interim dividend and said it was on track to meet its full-year expectations, as it saw pretax profit rise in the half year to end-June, boosted by its acquisition of Datapoint Corp last September.
The telecoms and data services company proposed an interim dividend of 9.3 pence per share, up 39% from 6.7 pence in the previous year.
Maintel posted a pretax profit of GBP2.1 million, up from GBP2.0 million a year before. Revenue rose to GBP20.7 million from GBP13.6 million, but this was offset by higher cost of sales and administrative expenses.
Revenue growth was driven by the company's acquisition of Datapoint Corp. The company said that Datapoint is now fully integrated, and is performing well.
In managed service and equipment revenue rose 3%, excluding Datapoint, as a strong performance in equipment and professional services more than offset a reduction in managed services.
Network services revenues declined 1%, hit by pricing pressures on call traffic which was offset by improved data and Voice-over-Internet-Protocol and Session-Initiation-Protocol services.
Maintel continued to make improvement in the quality of its mobile customer base, it said, removing smaller and lower-value customers and replacing them with larger corporates. Whilst this led to a reduction in connection numbers, it improved revenues, although the cost of acquiring the customers hit margins.
The company said it enters the second half with good pipelines in each of its divisions. Trading conditions remain good, the company said, although it noted there was some evidence of some pricing pressure on larger equipment orders.
"The integration of Datapoint is now complete and we remain open to further acquisitions should they provide clear value to shareholders," said Chief Executive Eddie Buxton in a statement. "Moving forward, we are confident in our ability to meet the board's expectations and this is reflected in the 39% increase in the interim dividend."
Shares in Maintel were trading up 4.2% at 525.00 pence Monday morning.
By Hana Stewart-Smith; hanassmith@alliancenews.com; @HanaSSAllNews
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