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LONDON (Alliance News) - STV Group PLC on Wednesday lifted its dividend by a quarter, despite reporting a fall in pretax profit in 2015, hit by a writedown related to its STV Productions division.
The company reported a pretax profit of GBP9.8 million in 2015, down from GBP17.3 million in 2014, as revenue fell to GBP116.5 million from GBP120.4 million and it reported exceptional costs of GBP8.8 million. This included a GBP5.1 million writedown of goodwill related to the company's STV Productions' business, and writedowns related to its investment in MirriAd Ltd and assets related to redundant STV Player platforms.
Stripping out exceptional costs, pretax profit rose 10% to GBP19.1 million.
High customer interaction helped drive up revenue in the company's STV Consumer division, but this was offset by a 38% decline in revenue for the STV Productions segment.
Whilst STV Productions continued to expand its customer base and secured commissions with new customers in the UK, it saw fewer commissions and lower deliveries than the company had forecast, which means that growth targets for the STV Productions business were not met. This led to STV writing down the carrying value of goodwill related to STV Productions by GBP5.1 million.
STV proposed a final dividend of 6.0 pence, which takes its total dividend for the year up to 10.0 pence, up 25% from the 8.0 pence it paid in 2014.
"Our investments and focus have put us in a strong position to deliver organic growth in the future and the increasing diversity of earnings improves the security of returns for our investors," said Chief Executive Officer Rob Woodward in a statement.
Shares in STV were down 1.5% Wednesday morning at 422.60 pence.
By Hana Stewart-Smith; hanassmith@alliancenews.com; @HanaSSAllNews
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