Mortice expects results to be broadly in line with prior year

Security and facilities management company Mortice updated the market on its trading for the 12 months ended 31 March on Wednesday, reporting a 21% improvement in revenue to $219m.

The AIM-traded firm said adjusted EBITDA was expected to be $9.5m, slightly lower than the $9.6m reported in the prior year.

It said the Indian market had continued to grow “strongly”, however the UK market was more difficult, which adversely affected the cost of supplying contracts.

Looking more closely at the books, security services sales were up 20% to $118m, while facilities management revenues rose 22% to $101m.

Its geographical revenue mix was exactly the same at the prior year, with 64% of revenue coming from India, 31% from the UK, and 5% from Singapore.

Its adjusted profit before tax was down 15.6% to $3.9 m, with the board saying its adjusted profit after tax was “broadly in line” with the prior year at $2.7m.

Net debt stood at $18.4m, widening from $13.5m a year earlier, with the board noting that $3.12m of debt had been raised to fund the acquisition of 2.33 million shares from UK vendors.

“New clients [were] added during the period, including J&K Bank, Bharat Oman Refineries, HCL Technologies and STT Global in India and Maple Tree, Ripple Bay in Singapore,” the board said in its statement.

“More than 90% of income [was] generated from repeat business.”

It said a cost optimisation programme had been undertaken with Office & General, and Frontline Security was now fully integrated and rebranded under the Tenon FM brand.

“The financial results for the year to 31 March are expected to be announced in August.”