The following is a round-up of earnings and trading updates by London-listed companies, issued on Thursday and not separately reported by Alliance News:
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Card Factory PLC - Wakefield, West Yorkshire-based greeting cards and gifting firm - Buys Garven Holdings LLC, a Minnesota gift and ‘celebration essentials’ designer and wholesaler which trades as Garven Design and Cadence Packaging, for $25 million. Deal was completed on Wednesday and funded from existing cash and debt facilities. Based on current sales, the acquisition represents around 5% of total revenue, with negligible benefit to be realised in the remainder of financial 2025.
Says the deal will allow it to ‘further explore design and buying synergies, alongside opportunities to introduce its own ranges into the US wholesale market’. In addition, says second-half trading has been in line with expectations, with an encouraging start to the Christmas season. Its programme of productivity and efficiency savings, announced in September, also remains on track. Full-year expectations are currently unchanged. Chief Executive Darcy Willson-Rymer says: ‘This acquisition is a key step in delivering the growth from partnerships as we guided at our Capital Markets Update in May last year. Garven represents an exciting opportunity for Card Factory to build scale in the world’s biggest celebration occasions market.’
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Headlam Group PLC - floor coverings specialist - Says revenue decline slows in the second half to date, despite a the lack of market improvement. Revenue declines 7.3% for the five months to the end of November compared to an 11.8% decline in the first half. Explains the lower level of revenue decline in H2 principally been driven by revenue from larger customers, in particular resulting from Carpetright exiting the market. This helped to reduce the decline in UK revenue from 11.3% in H1 to 6.6% in the 5 months to the end of November. Despite the improved rate of revenue decline in recent months, the market itself has been weaker than previously projected. Accordingly, expects the underlying pretax loss for the second half to be broadly in line with the first half. Projects £2 million increase in costs as a result of the budget. Chief Executive Chris Payne says: ‘The challenges impacting the UK flooring market have continued to weigh on our trading performance in the short term. However, the board remains encouraged by the significant progress we are making against our strategy and transformation plan to simplify our operations and improve our customer offering. In light of the additional market headwinds, we are extending this programme to target greater benefits over the next two years. This progress remains critical to ensuring the business is positioned for long-term success given the wider current macroeconomic uncertainty and its impact on consumer confidence and our markets in the near-term.’
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Gunsynd PLC - investor in companies and projects in the natural resource sector - Says pretax loss narrows to £845,000 in the year to July from £1.7 million a year prior. This reflects a reduced unrealised loss on financial investments of £95,000 compared with £1.0 million a year before. Administrative expenses rise to £598,000 from £568,000. ‘The cyclical downturn in the mineral resource exploration sector continued throughout the year under review, however, there are signs that this pressure may now be easing, not least with increases in the prices of gold, copper and uranium, the commodities of focus within the company’s portfolio. Stock market conditions remain depressed, but the board believes this has created a situation of vast disconnect between commodity prices and the valuation of junior exploration companies,’ company says. Further Gunsynd says: ‘The board continues to look at investments in line with its investment policy.’ This could ‘potentially include increasing a stake(s) in investments already held. Such investment(s) may or may not lead to a reverse takeover.’
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Software Circle PLC - Manchester, England-based acquirer of market software businesses - Swings to pretax profit of £1.3 million in the year to September from £1.9 million a year prior. Revenue rises 8.5% to £8.9 million from £8.2 million. Says an expected decline in the lower margin, non-recurring revenue within its Nettl Systems business, following a turbulent previous financial year, resulted in an overall decline in like-for-like revenue of 8% for the group. Moving forward, expects revenue to stabilise at this year’s level. Remains ‘cautiously optimistic’ about the remaining year.
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Carclo PLC - Surrey, England-based provider of high-precision components - Pretax loss narrows to £91,000 in the six months ended September from £2.5 million a year prior despite 8.9% drop in revenue to £61.0 million from $66.9 million. Basic loss per share narrows to 0.8p from 3.0p. Loss from exceptional items narrows to £973,000 from £2.1 million. Finance expenses decrease to £2.8 million from £2.9 million. Says it is on track to complete debt financing in the fourth quarter of 2025. Further it has ‘increasing confidence in meeting sits full-year expectations’ due to its ‘solid’ half-year performance combined with ‘stable’ markets for its businesses. Adds that ‘we are confident that we remain on track to achieve our long-term strategic goals.’
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Ebiquity PLC - London-based media and marketing consultancy - Issues trading update for year to December. Says the second half of 2024 has been stronger than the first, as anticipated, with mid-single digit revenue growth expected. But cautions that ‘the very final months of the financial year are not meeting those high expectations in all respects’. As a result, expects full-year revenue to show a low single-digit decline from 2023. ‘This has resulted from challenging trading conditions in some regions and from some operational constraints as the volume of business in recent months has become more concentrated,’ company says. Realises some ‘tactical’ cost savings to mitigate the sales shortfall. Thus, expects adjusted earnings before interest and tax for the second half should be more than double those of the first. This will amount to a full year adjusted Ebit margin of around 10%, down from 15% a year prior. Notes stronger seasonal cash collections will continue through the first quarter of 2025 and stresses the group has ‘ample liquidity and headroom against its banking covenants.’
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ITM Power PLC - Sheffield, England-based designer and manufacturer of electrolyser systems for green hydrogen production - Updates financial 2025 guidance. Leaves full-year revenue outlook unchanged at between £18 million and £22 million. Expects adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation loss in the range of £32 million to £36 million, improved from £35 million to £40 million. Net cash at year-end is projected in the range of £170 million to £180 million, improved from £160 million to £175 million. Revenue in the six months to October forecast of £15.2 million with an adjusted Ebitda loss of £17.1 million. Dennis Schulz, chief executive, says: ‘In the first half of the year, ITM achieved its strongest revenue performance in any six-month period whilst tightly managing costs and capital expenditure. Our sales pipeline has continued to grow, and we are well-positioned as customer FIDs accelerate through 2025. We look forward to providing a more detailed update with our interim results in January.’
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