LONDON (Alliance News) - Plastics Capital PLC said Monday its annual profits and revenue increased after an "outstanding year for organic growth".
For the year ended March 31, Plastics Capital multiplied its pretax profit to GBP2.8 million from GBP766,000 the year before. The company increased its revenue 17% to GBP76.7 million from GBP65.8 million.
The manufacturer of specialist plastic products said financial year 2018 was a year of "record organic growth". Its Films division had organic revenue growth of 23% year-on-year.
The division "successfully developed and converted a number of important key accounts" and "benefited from having added a large amount of new extrusion and conversion capacity in the last two years".
Plastics Capital'S Industrial division had a 6.5% year-on-year revenue growth.
The company "considered whether to reintroduce dividend payments" but decided not to. It said the "strong organic growth" and "the potential for making further investments" meant "it would be unwise" to propose a dividend.
Looking ahead, the company said its trading in the first quarter of 2019 "has been relatively good, making up for a weak momentum at the end of the financial year 2018".
Plastics Capital has decided to bring the two businesses that shared production capacity in its Films division under one management teams. It hopes it can now "utilise capacity in the most efficient way possible".
Chairman Faisal Rahmatallah said: "Financial year 2018 has been an outstanding year for organic growth, particularly in our films businesses. To capitalise on this, we have recruited and trained new staff, invested in new facilities and equipment, and raised equity capital to make sure that we have scope for further growth as we move into the next financial year. As a result, our operating profit margin has reduced somewhat during the year but we consider this to be a sensible trade-off for the creation of long term shareholder value.
"We continue to have a number of exciting projects that we will be investing in as the current financial year progresses. We believe these projects will help us to deliver good growth over the next few years and we anticipate that this year will be another year of good progress."
Shares in Plastics Capital were down 0.9% Monday at 109.50 pence each.
