LONDON (Alliance News) - Scholium Group PLC Thursday reported a widened pretax loss in its recently-ended financial year and cut its full-year dividend by half as its Shapero Rare Books business continues to face a volatile market.
The fine art and collectibles trading company, which floated in London in March 2014, said it made a GBP529,000 pretax loss in the year to March 31, wider than the GBP372,000 loss it made the year before, as revenue fell to GBP5.2 million from GBP6.1 million.
Scholium said that its main operating brand, Shapero Rare Books, experienced slower-than-anticipated trading in the Russian and Eastern European department, while Scholium Trading, which trades with third-party dealers in the rare and collectible goods market, performed more strongly.
Scholium will not pay a final dividend, meaning its total dividend for the year is 0.5 pence for the year, down from the 1.0p it paid last year.
Scholium added that revenue and gross profit in the first quarter of the current financial year are ahead of the previous year and, in June, were both greater than any other month since the company started trading on AIM.
However, it warned that revenue volatility in Shapero Rare Books remains as the antiquarian book market fails to show the "consistent vitality" of the financial year that ended in 2014.
"We have built up excellent stock at Shapero Rare Books and have a strong balance sheet. This places us on a firm footing to explore alternatives for taking our company forward both within the business and externally. The slow-down in our Russian and Eastern European book department has been a setback. Nonetheless, we have started to reposition our stock and, whilst trading remains volatile, we are starting to see initial returns," Chairman Jasper Allen said in a statement.
Shares in Scholium were down 4.8% Thursday morning to 39.04 pence.
By Karolina Kaminska; karolinakaminska@alliancenews.com @KarolinaAllNews
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Scholium Group (SCHO)