Soaring profits for Styles & Wood
MANCHESTER-based property services firm Styles and Wood is celebrating a 200% pre-tax profit hike to £2.1m (2013: £0.7m) in its preliminary results for the year ended December 31.
Revenue rose 3.2% to £97m (2013: 94m) with an order book at year end up 20% to £79m (2013: £66.5m).
The company benefited from a national branch improvement programme awarded for one of the UK’s high street banks with a contract value of about £18m.
Service lines within ongoing Styles&Wood banking frameworks were enhanced to include full portfolio provision for buildings’ refurbishment and refit.
A number of high quality reference projects were also completed within the private commercial sector on behalf of a range of blue chip clients, with particular growth in the North West and London.
And, following the successful remodelling of the Royal Northern College of Music Concert Hall in Manchester, there was the signature design and build contract secured for the refurbishment of the University of Lancaster Library, contract value of approximately.£9m.
Meanwhile, the listed company also announced a refinancing of the outstanding convertible preference shares held by Royal Bank of Scotland subsidiary SIG 1 Holdings.
The refinancing includes the acquisition by Henderson and the Business Growth Fund, the investors of the £13m outstanding convertible preference shares in issue, for £5.8m.
This included the conversion of £5.2m of the outstanding shares by the investors into 554,666 new ordinary shares at a conversion price of £9.375, representing a 1,476% premium to the closing share price as at yesterday (June 18) and the issue of a £2m loan note to the investors by the company which has been applied to redeem a further £2m of the outstanding convertible preference shares, leaving £5.8 million of outstanding convertible preference shares in issue.
Chief executive Tony Lenehan said: “The refinancing announced today positions Styles and Wood for growth at a pivotal stage in the Group’s development. Over the last 12 to 18 months we have successfully implemented our diversification strategy to ensure that we are ideally placed to take advantage of the positive trends we are seeing in our core markets.”
Styles & Wood were advised on the transaction by corporate partners Jon Gillow and Ian Gillis from Hill Dickinson LLP.
