Aveva maintains dividend after first-half loss

Aveva kept its dividend unchanged as the industrial software company reported a first-half loss caused by tough trading during the Covid-19 crisis.

The company swung to a £23.2m operating loss for the six months to the end of September from a £25.5m profit a year earlier as revenue fell 15% to £332.6m.

Aveva proposed an unchanged interim dividend of 15.5p a share and said this reflected confidence in the resilience of its business. The company said it was confident about its prospects for the rest of the year.

The company's shares fell 3.2% to £42.74 at 09:01 GMT.

The FTSE 100 group said the Covid-19 crisis caused delays to some expected sales and a reduction in subscription licences. Subscription revenue fell 19.2% to £113.9m in a "challenging economic environment" and against a strong prior-year period.

"Aveva experienced tough market conditions across all its geographical reporting segments and business units during the first half as disruption from the pandemic caused customer caution and led to delays in some forecast sales," the company said. "However, due to the strong sales pipeline for the second half of the financial year, the Board has confidence in the outlook for the full year."

Costs fell 8.3% to £276.3m as the company froze pay and recruitment and cut spending on travel and events during the pandemic. The company said it continued to expect long-term rising demand for digital services from companies as a result of artificial intelligence, cloud computing and other megatrends.