Revenue, profit and EBITDA fall in final stock market results at KCOM
Hull-based telecoms business KCOM – which is to be de-listed tomorrow after being acquired in a £627m deal – has this morning published its final full-year London Stock Exchange results, which show a disappointing year.
This morning publishing results for the year ended 31 March 2019, KCOM said it saw group revenue drop 5% – from £301m in 2018 to £285m. Meanwhile, pre-tax profits dropped 27%, from £33m to £24m and group EBITDA declined 14% – from £68m to £58m.
KCOM said it had been impacted by the performance of its two national business segments which were “significantly below expectation in the year” and a “broadly flat” Enterprise division.
KCOM added: “Revenue in the Group’s National Network Services segment has continued to fall.
“This decline reflects continued churn and a performance well below the underlying market for its services. This performance led to the Directors’ decision to impair the carrying value of goodwill for this segment in the first half of the year, resulting in a non-cash exceptional charge of £32.2 million.”
The firm added that the total non-cash goodwill impairments during the year across both its Enterprise and National Network Services segments was £51.4m.
KCOM added that it increased net debt to £107.2m (2018: £62.6m), driven by its planned capital investment in Hull & East Yorkshire and a material one-off working capital outflow in the first half of the year.
But the firm said it had been successful in Hull & East Yorkshire, where it completed the roll-out of fibre across its existing network and the percentage of broadband customers taking full fibre continued to increase.
Post-period end, KCOM was acquired by asset management firm Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets, trading as MEIF Fibre 6, after it won a fierce week-long auction process to buy the business on 12 July.
It is expected that trading in KCOM shares on the London Stock Exchange’s main market will be suspended tomorrow (1 August 2019) and that the scheme will become effective on the same date.
