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LONDON (Alliance News) - Recruitment software and services company Dillistone Group PLC Tuesday said it will be acquiring ISV Software Ltd, and signalled its confidence by lifting its interim dividend, despite seeing profit fall in its first-half.
The company will acquire ISV for GBP850,000, which it will partly fund via a share placing. ISV is a training and testing services company, it posted a pretax profit of GBP162,000 in 2013, and had net assets of GBP256,000 as at December 31, 2013.
Dillistone will place 526,316 new shares at a price of 95 pence per share to raise GBP500,000. Shares in Dillistone were trading down 4.6% at 98.00 pence Tuesday morning.
For the half-year to the end of June, Dillistone posted a pretax profit of GBP646,000, down from GBP817,000 a year before, despite seeing revenue rise to GBP4.2 million from GBP3.8 million, as a result of higher administrative expenses and cost of sales.
Revenue growth was driven by its acquisition of FCP Internet, although this was partly offset by a higher number of subscription model sales which compromise short term revenue for longer term revenue visibility.
The integration of FCP was also responsible for higher costs.
Dillistone expects its full-year adjusted profits to be at a similar level to 2013, as a result of a slower implementation cycle due to new product introductions, and the strength of sterling.
However, to demonstrate its confidence and commitment to a progressive dividend policy, the company proposed an interim dividend of 1.3 pence, up from 1.25 pence in the previous year.
It said it believes the recent launch of its FileFinder Anywhere software will help its order book to continue to improve as the year progresses. It expects some of these contracts to be realised in the current year, with the remainder will improve its pipeline for 2015.
By Hana Stewart-Smith; hanassmith@alliancenews.com; @HanaSSAllNews
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