LONDON (Alliance News) - Telecom Plus PLC Thursday said its profit in the recently-ended financial year will come in below its expectations due to energy price cuts it made in the fourth quarter and as warm weather cut energy usage by its customers.
The utility provider, which trades as Utility Warehouse, said it now expects it pretax profit excluding share incentive scheme charges and amortisation on its energy supply arrangements with nPower to be between GBP52 million and GBP53 million for the year to end-March. It said the figure also takes into account about GBP6 million of higher-than-expected leakage and theft in the gas system.
Still, it re-iterated that it intends to pay a final dividend for the year of 21 pence, bringing the total for the year to 40p, up 14% on the previous year.
The company, which supplies gas and electricity and telecom services like broadband, mobile and fixed line telephony through its Utility Warehouse brand, had been predicting that revenue, profits and earnings per share would all hit new records in the financial year that just ended. It reported an adjusted pretax profit of GBP44.6 million for the year to end-March 2014 on revenue of GBP658.8 million. It will still achieve its target, but had expected to do even better.
Its shares were down 25% at 734.00 pence early Thursday, making it by far the worst performer on the FTSE 250 index.
By Steve McGrath; stevemcgrath@alliancenews.com; @stevemcgrath1
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Telecom Plus (TEP)