LONDON (Alliance News) - Paragon Entertainment Ltd Monday said it doubled its revenues, and narrowed its losses in the first-half of the year, boosted by significant new project wins, and the successful completion of several large projects.
However, the ride attractions company said that it has downgraded its profit expectations for the second-half of the year, due to a weaker performance from its attraction division.
"During April, we fully opened our first attraction at Merry Hill which has not yet achieved profitability. We continue to investigate further attraction opportunities. Overall the Group continues to trade well. However, due to the performance in our attractions division, we have exercised prudence and reduced our profit expectations for the second half of the year," said Chief Executive Officer, Mark Pyrah, in a statement.
The visitor attraction design, production and fit-out business reported revenues for the six months to June 30 of GBP4.6 million, a 99% increase from GBP2.3 million in revenues a year earlier, boosted by a strong performance from its design and build business unit, which centres around family and leisure attractions.
The company said it narrowed it first-half pretax loss to GBP1.3 million, from GBP1.5 million a year earlier. It reported a net loss of GBP1.1 million, compared with GBP1.2 million in the previous year.
The group said that its GBP1.3 million investment in its first attraction at Westfield's Merry Hill shopping centre in Birmingham and a number of co-location attractions, has delivered a disappointing financial performance, and is not yet generating an operating profit, despite opening fully in April.
Paragon Entertainment said that its design and built activity in the first half of the year was at record levels, as a result of a number of new project wins in its design and build business unit, and the completion of large projects in Halifax, Twickenham, Lausanne in Switzerland, as well as the 'Wallace and Gromit' ride at Blackpool Pleasure Beach.
It said that it has a contracted order book of GBP9 million for the second half of the financial year, and into 2014.
The group said that at the end of June 30 it had a cash balance of GBP308,000, with a subsequent equity fundraise of GBP780,000, which it said will be partly used to support the working capital for developments in its design and build business. It also said that it renewed and increased its overdraft facility to GBP800,000 for a further 12 months, in order to cover the business until July 2014.
Paragon Entertainment shares were down 5.3% Monday morning, trading at 4.50 pence per share.
By Rowena Harris-Doughty; rowenaharrisdoughty@alliancenews.com; @rharrisdoughty
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