Senior PLC on Monday said it increased its dividend by 25% as it expressed confidence in future prospects despite a drop in half-year profit.
In the six months to June 30, the Rickmansworth-based manufacturing and engineering business said pretax profit fell 2% to £13.2 million from £13.5 million a year prior. Revenue rose 4% to £501.4 million from £482.3 million.
The dividend was increased by 25% to 0.75 pence per share from 0.60 pence.
In Aerospace, revenue increased 14% year-on-year on a constant currency basis. This reflected the ramp up in civil aircraft production rates notwithstanding 737 MAX volumes being subdued following the Alaskan Airlines incident in January.
In Flexonics, revenue was down 6% compared to prior year, on a constant currency basis. As expected, this was due to land vehicle markets starting to normalise and a rebalancing of inventory by upstream oil & gas customers, Senior said.
The group said its full-year outlook was unchanged with ‘good growth anticipated for the full-year’.
Chief Executive David Squires said: ‘Senior has delivered a robust set of results that are in line with our expectations.’
‘For the full-year we still expect to maintain good performance in Flexonics with [the first half] slightly higher than [the second half] due to a return to more typical levels of land vehicle demand.’
Shares in Senior fell 2.7% to 153.40 pence in London on Monday morning.
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