 saw shares plunge over 5 percent on Wednesday, after higher one-off costs and negative currency movements.){kind=link}
Support services company Carillion (LON:CLLN) saw shares plunge over 5 percent on Wednesday, after higher one-off costs and negative currency movements caused a 5 percent drop in profit.
The company saw pretax profit fall to £146.7 million from £155.1 million a year ago, with its underlying operating margin also lower than expected at 4.9 per cent.
However revenue increased to £5.21 billion from £4.59 billion in the same period last year, alongside a notable boost in underlying profit to £178 million in the year to December 31st.
Net borrowing saw an increase over the year, driven largely by ‘adverse movements in foreign exchange rates’ hitting 218.9 million. In a statement, Carillion said intended to reduce this significantly over the next year, and proposed a full-year dividend increase of one per cent to 18.45p.
Carillion Chairman, Philip Green, said “increased margin growth” and “good cash flow” drove the increase in revenue over 2016.
“Given the size and quality of our order book and pipeline of contract opportunities, our customer-focused culture and integrated business model, we have a good platform from which to develop the business in 2017.
We will accelerate the rebalancing of our business into markets and sectors where we can win high-quality contracts and achieve our targets for margin and cash flows, while actively managing the positions we have in challenging markets. We will also begin reducing average net borrowing by stepping up our ongoing cost reduction programmes and our focus on managing working capital.”
Carillion are a UK-based support services company engaged in facilities management and construction projects, and are part of the FTSE 250. Shares in Carillion are currently trading down 5.30 percent at 207.30 (0956GMT).