Results Round-up

Byotrol revealed a narrower loss in its full year results, buoyed by significantly lower operating costs and slightly higher revenue.

The anti-microbial hygiene company posted a pretax loss of £0.7k for the 12 months to 31 May, an improvement from £0.8m a year earlier.

Revenue was up to £3.3m, from £3.1m a year earlier, although headline revenues plummeted 63% from £0.8m to £0.3m in the consumer division, hit by a previously-disclosed one-off licence suspension payment made by a US licencee in the first half of 2014.

Meanwhile operating costs shrank 21% from £2m to £1.6m.

Annual profits at Majestic Wine dropped by nearly a quarter in the year to 31 March, though the retailer gave an optimistic outlook on the back of its recent acquisition of Naked Wines.

The AIM group, which bought the customer-funded online wine business for £70m in April, reported a pre-tax profit of £18.4m, down 22.5% from £23.8m the year before.

The decline resulted from a 30 basis-point fall in the gross margin to 22.7%, a 5.7% increase in distribution costs to £28.3m and a 31.4% jump in admin costs to £18.5m, partly due to one-off costs related to the Naked deal.

Adjusted pre-tax profit, excluding the exceptional items linked to the acquisition, fell 12.2% to £20.9m but was in line with guidance.

Nevertheless, revenues increased 2.3% over the year to £284.5m, with the number of active customers up 5.4% at 678,000.

Majestic said online sales were up 12.4% at £31.3m and now represent 12.1% of UK retail sales.