LONDON (Alliance News) - Trifast PLC Tuesday reported strong growth in profit and revenue for its last financial year thanks to organic growth and its acquisition of VIC in Italy, raised its dividend by half, gave a confident outlook, and revealed its management succession plans.
The maker of industrial fasteners for the automotive, electronics and telecoms and domestic appliances markets, said Chief Executive Jim Barker will step down at the end of September, although he'll remain available in a consultancy role until June 2016. Barker will be replaced on October 1 by Finance Director Mark Belton, who in turn will be replaced by Financial Controller Clare Foster.
That news came as Trifast reported a pretax profit of GBP11.9 million for the year to end-March, up a third from GBP8.9 million a year earlier, as revenue grew to GBP154.7 million from GBP129.8 million and margins improved.
Its operating profit excluding items including acquisition costs and share-based payment charges rose to GBP15.3 million from GBP9.7 million, with GBP4.4 million of the increase related to the VIC acquisition.
Trifast hiked its final dividend for the year to 1.5 pence, from 1.0p, bringing the total dividend to 2.1p, up from 1.4p.
Its return on capital employed rose to 18.6%, from 16.3%.
"The impressive results in 2015 are stronger than originally expected. They reflect the operational improvements implemented by management over recent years which are now delivering growth in both revenue and profitability, together with the upturn in confidence as we progressed through the year," the company said.
"There are some macroeconomic influences that we cannot control which may affect future results. This being said, as a business we remain confident in our ability to deliver our strategy and are excited about the future," it added.
Trifast said its order book remains solid and its trading performance so far in the new financial year has been "good" as the positive momentum it saw in the second half of last year continues.
"There continue to be many opportunities, both across our key sectors and with new and existing customer partnerships, and we believe that the Group will go from strength to strength. We remain encouraged by the future growth profile of the business and our commercial progress looks set to continue positively during 2015/16," it said.
Still, Trifast shares were down 3.1% at 124.00 pence Tuesday morning. The stock is still up 15.4% so far in 2015.
By Steve McGrath; stevemcgrath@alliancenews.com; @stevemcgrath1
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Trifast (TRI)