LONDON (Alliance News) - Aviation services firm Gama Aviation PLC said Monday its interim profit narrowed as one-off costs jumped amid a number of investments, despite revenue growing on the strength of its US business.
For the six months ended June, pretax profit more than halved to USD3.2 million from USD8.7 million the year prior. This was despite revenue rising 3.0% to USD104.6 million from USD101.6 million the year before.
Profit performance was held back by a sharp rise in administrative expenses to USD20.4 million from USD15.6 million the year prior. This was primarily due to a jump in exceptional costs to USD4.4 million from USD665,000 the year before primarily due to litigation and transaction costs.
On an underlying basis - excluding one-off costs - profit dropped a more modest 5.7% to USD6.6 million from USD7.0 million, with constant currency profit rising 4.3%.
"The first half of the year has been a busy period with the equity placing and refinancing completed, and progress across our operations," Gama Chief Executive Officer Marwan Khalek said.
In March, Gama raised GBP48.0 million through the placing of 19.6 million shares at 245.00 pence each. Shares in Gama were 5.7% lower at 183.00 pence on Monday.
The firm also "made major strategic investments in Asia through our collaborations with Hutchison Whampoa; secured a new modern facility at Bournemouth Airport, UK for our Europe ground operations; and commenced investments in a new business aviation centre at Sharjah airport in the Middle East; and into new base maintenance facilities on the east and west coasts in the US," Khalek added.
"We continue to scale up across all geographies and service lines and develop our pipeline of value enhancing acquisitions," Khalek said. "We remain confident in delivering our future growth plans and strategic objectives."
"The group's expectations for the full year remain unchanged," Khalek continued. "The US continues to grow strongly, market conditions in Europe remain challenging but stable with new business wins in Europe ground flowing through in the second half of the year. In the Middle East and Asia, the divisions continue to make steady progress in scaling up their operations."
