LONDON (Alliance News) - Stanley Gibbons Group PLC on Friday said its pretax profit and revenue both increased in the year to the end of March, boosted by a significant improvement in its gross margin, even as it said its core stamp-collecting business suffered from delays to some high value sales.
The retailer said its pretax profit for the year was GBP3.1 million on revenue of GBP56.9 million. The company did not provide directly comparable figures due to a change in the end of its financial year, but said its pretax profit for the 15 months to the end of March 2014 was GBP2.2 million on revenue of GBP51.8 million. It said it will pay a total dividend for the year of 5 pence per share, compared to 7 pence paid in the 15-month period.
The results are in line with the trading update the company published in April, when it said that its profit and sales would miss market expectations, but said both would be significantly higher year-on-year thanks to recent acquisitions, including Noble Investments (UK) Ltd and Mallett PLC, both of which performed in line with its expectations.
The profit warning was issued due to problems in its core philatelic dealing business, where some high-value sales failed to complete in time for inclusion in its 2015 results. It said in April, however, that it does expect these to complete in the first half of its 2016 financial year and said Friday that one has already completed.
Stanley Gibbons said it expects further sales and profit growth in the coming year and will be focusing on growing its newly-launched online marketplace, which went live in May.
Martin Bralsford, Stanley Gibbons' chairman, said the company "remains confident that the strength of the market twinned with the expected return from the delivery of our strategy, particularly from the commercialisation of our recently launched online marketplace, provides material profit growth potential in the current financial year and beyond."
Shares in Stanley Gibbons were up 1.1% to 252.345 pence on Friday.
By Sam Unsted; samunsted@alliancenews.com; @SamUAtAlliance
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