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(Alliance News) - Infection and contamination prevention firm Tristel PLC boosted its dividend Wednesday after annual profit and revenue rose amid "solid" progress across its business.
For the year ended June, pretax profit widened 18% to GBP4.7 million from GBP4.0 million the year prior. This was after revenue rose 18% to GBP26.2 million from GBP22.2 million the year before.
"We made solid progress during the year," Chief Executive Officer Paul Swinney said. "Top-line growth was driven by our overseas operations and this trend should continue with the acquisition of four of our main European distributors during the year and shortly after the year-end."
In November, Tristel acquired its distributors in Belgium, the Netherlands and France. In July, the firm acquired its Italian distributor.
"We were also pleased with 9% sales growth in the United Kingdom which was higher than in recent years," Swinney added. "Our direct involvement in the French ultrasound market has been very timely with the publication of new guidelines in the early summer. We have built a seven-strong salesforce to take advantage of buoyant demand conditions."
"Our progress in developing both sales and the sales team in China and Hong Kong is encouraging, focussing our efforts in the near term on the private hospital sector whilst we wait for new ultrasound disinfection guidelines to be published which will impact the public sector," Swinney continued.
Tristel proposed a 3.50 pence per share final dividend, up 17% from 2.98p the year prior. For the full year, the dividend rose 21% to 5.54p from 4.58p the year before.
"We are advancing our De Novo submission for Duo to the US Food & Drug Administration and are awaiting feedback to our most recent pre-submission request to the agency," Swinney said. "We expect to receive this before the end of 2019."
Shares in Tristel were 2.2% higher at 300.00 pence in London on Wednesday.
By Ahren Lester; ahrenlester@alliancenews.com
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