News blog
Ultimate Finance Group
- BY: Andrew Hore |
- POSTED: 17/03/2010 |
Factoring and invoice discounting provider Ultimate Finance Group has decided to distribute 50% of its post-tax profits as dividend.
Chief executive Richard Pepler says that he has already received emails from happy investors. Ultimate paid its first ever dividend last November. That was 0.25p a share and the maiden interim dividend is 0.3p a share with more to come later in the year.
Pepler says that the company does not need to retain all the cash and it makes sense to distribute it to shareholders. Some institutions were keen for Ultimate to have a dividend policy.
Pre-tax profit increased 36% to £191,000 in the six months to December 2009. Revenues grew from £2.23m to £2.85m.
There were 35 net additions to active clients taking the total to 289. More importantly, Ultimate is using its cash more efficiently. Client turnover financed grew 50% to £149m. This reflects faster collection of debtors helping Ultimate to generate more income from its facilities.
Ultimate has a £25m facility from Lloyds Bank and it is currently using £19.9m. The facility lasts a minimum of three years to July 2012.
The sales force has been improved and added to. Ultimate is still cautious about what companies it takes on. It not only credit checks its customers but also their own customers.
Pepler says that he does not believe that overdraft lending will return to the levels seen in the past. Factoring and invoice discounting already provides more finance for companies than overdrafts.
House broker (and 27.3% shareholder) WH Ireland forecasts a full year profit of £500,000. It forecasts a total dividend of 0.6p a share but with earnings per share of 1.8p expected it could be more. The forecast dividend provides a yield of 3.8%.
At 15.75p a share, Ultimate is valued at £3.15m – its net asset value is £3m.
The share price has nearly trebled over the past year. Anyone who invested a year ago will be getting a yield on their investment of more than 10%.
© 2024 Aim Micro. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
- Browse by issue
- All issues
- Popular tags
- All tags
- AIM Micro feeds
Keep up to date with articles published at AIMMicro.com. Subscribe to AIM Micro RSS Feeds
|