(Alliance News) - Auction Technology Group PLC on Wednesday reported strong growth in its Arts & Antiques division as the firm highlighted positive trading in the new financial year.
The London-based auction market operator and technology company said it its pretax profit more than doubled in the year ended September 30 to USD18.4 million from USD8.6 million the prior year, as the firm benefitted from lower net finance costs.
Its shares climbed 15% to 505.00 pence on Wednesday morning in London.
Revenue over the period grew by 5.0% to USD174.2 million from USD165.9 million, with growth driven by a 12% improvement in Arts & Antiques to USD90.3 million from USD80.5 million the prior year. The firm said these figures benefitted from its USD40 million acquisition of Vintage Software LLC, trading as estatesales.net, in February last year.
The FTSE 250-listed firm said revenue also improved slightly in its Industrial & Commercial segment, up 0.6% on-year to USD71.8 million from USD71.4 million.
The firm said it does not expect to declare or pay a dividend in the foreseeable future as per its dividend policy, it seeks growth opportunities through investments and thus looks to retain any future earnings to finance them.
It added that it will review its dividend policy on an ongoing basis.
The firm noted that trading in the first 8 weeks of the new financial year has continued the positive momentum evidenced in the second half of financial year 2024, with it remaining confident in sustaining growth.
For the full-year, Auction said it is expecting revenue growth of between 4% and 6% and an adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation margin of between 45% and 46%. This is broadly flat with financial year 2024's margin of 46%.
Chief Executive John-Paul Savant said: "ATG continued to deliver growth, generate strong cash flow and execute against investments that improve the user experience and capture more of the auction value chain, despite some continued headwinds in our end-markets.
"We expect that our program of continuous improvements will result in extending the addressable base of buyers and sellers and contribute to ATG's outperformance of the underlying market we serve, with underlying conversion rate improvements as well as incremental transaction revenue from value-added solutions."
By Christopher Ward, Alliance News reporter
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