Knights Group Holdings PLC on Monday rewarded shareholders with a healthy dividend increase after reporting double-digit growth in annual profit.

In the financial year ending April, the London-based professional services company said pretax profit increased 29% to £14.8 million from £11.5 million a year prior. Revenue rose 5.6% to £150.0 million from £142.1 million, or by 1.9% on an organic basis, from a year ago.

Underlying earnings per share increased 8.0% to 21.81 pence from 20.20p. Basic EPS rose 2.4% to 11.47p from 9.28p.

The final dividend was hiked by 12% to 2.79p per share from 2.50p, giving a 9.2% increase in the total dividend to 4.40p from 4.03p from a year prior.

Chief Executive David Beech said it was a ‘good’ performance against a ‘challenging market backdrop’.

Despite this, the share price reaction was muted, trading 1.4% lower at 143.00p in London on Monday morning.

Knights Group said it had attracted a number of new and significant clients and extended relationships with a number of existing clients during the financial year.

Looking ahead, Knights Group said it had an encouraging start to the new financial year with a strong recovery in residential property.

The firm highlighted an active pipeline of attractive acquisitions and said it was confident of delivering a ‘meaningful improvement’ in organic growth in the current financial year.

Beech said the encouraging start to the year, left him ‘confident’ of delivering ‘plans to double the size of the business in the medium term’.

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