Mercia will return \u00a37m to shareholders as part of the group’s evolution to a pure play, regionally-focused private capital asset manager, boosted by “an excellent set of full year results”. <\/p>\n
The Warwickshire-headquartered group backs SMEs and last year invested \u00a3284m into 165 businesses, through venture, debt, private equity and proprietary capital.<\/p>\n
“The last 12 months have been our absolute record year in terms of capital deployment,” chief executive Mark Payton told TheBusinessDesk.com.<\/p>\n
Its third-party funds include the regionally-important Northern Powerhouse and Midlands Engine investment funds.<\/p>\n
Mercia increased its EBITDA – a measure of operating profitability – by 35% to \u00a37.6m in the year to March. The combination of an increased dividend and a \u00a33m annual share buyback will see the fund manager hand most of this over to its shareholders.<\/p>\n
Payton said: “We are now determined to return a very, very large proportion of our profitability, our cash generative profitability, to our shareholders.<\/p>\n
“We now have a strong, growing, profitable business, with an increasingly-growing margin, where we can return capital, be it through progressive dividend or through the share buyback. It is a big focus of ours going forward to reward the patience of our shareholders.”<\/p>\n
This is possible on the back of “an excellent set of full year results” for the group.<\/p>\n
“Our increasing scale is driving profitable growth and an increasing EBITDA margin,” he said. “Our ambition now is to go much further and faster.”<\/p>\n
Payton said this is partly about “writing bigger checks”, as Mercia looks to hit ambitious three-year targets by 2027.<\/p>\n
“It’s matching our ambition with the ambition of SME owners, who are looking for more money to finance their growth as well,” he said.<\/p>\n
Mercia is continuing to simplify its business model, and has the target of divesting 70% of its balance sheet direct investment portfolio over a three-year period.<\/p>\n
The group has modelled for up to \u00a310m of exit returns in the current financial year, which runs to March 2026. It then expects to divest the majority of its direct investment portfolio, which was valued at \u00a3126m at the year-end, in its 2027 financial year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chief executive Mark Payton said: “Our ambition now is to go much further and faster”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":2082054,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[120781],"coauthors":[81],"class_list":["post-2099381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-markets","tag-featured-story","tag-top-story"],"yoast_head":"\n