Partner Article

Photo-me profits up 17.4% despite revenue fall

Photograph booth business Photo-me has announced a pre-tax profit rise of 17.4%, despite a fall in revenues.

The firm, which supplies instant photo booths around the UK, Ireland, Europe and Asia, said that while revenues fell by 7.1% in the six months up to 31st October, compared with the same period in 2011, a strong performance in its operations division kept profits up.

Photo-me reported growth in the German, Swiss and Japanese markets, as well as “tighter management” and lower costs.

In the UK and Ireland alone, revenues fell from £26.5m to £24.2m year-on-year for the same six month period, however operating profits rose from £18.3m to £20.3m.

The company’s non-executive chairman, John Lewis, commented:“One of Photo-Me’s great strengths is innovation.

After almost three years of testing and trialling in France and Belgium, our new laundry product is ready to be aggressively rolled out.

“If the results achieved to date are repeated on a much larger scale, we anticipate this product will become a significant contributor to profits within three years.

“We continued to generate significant levels of cash in the period and the net cash position at the end of October was £70 million, an increase of £18 million since the end of April.”

Photo-me announced that, as a result of its strong pre-tax profit rise, it would increase its interim dividend by 20%, and the board would investigate ways to return this cash to shareholders.

Mr Lewis continued:“As we always point out, the first half is seasonally the stronger for Photo-Me in terms of profits and we expect this certainly to be the case again.

“However, the Board remains confident of good progress over the year given that the level of profits in the first half broadly matched the outturn for the whole of the previous year.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Miranda Dobson .