Intertek share price: Group updates on half-year performance
Intertek (LON:ITRK) has updated investors on its half-year performance this morning.
**Highlights from the company statement:**
· Double digit revenue growth driven by organic growth and acquisitions
· Disciplined cost and margin management with margin up by 10bps1
· Double digit profit growth with adjusted EPS up 14.1%
· Strong cash conversion and disciplined capital allocation
· Half year dividend payment of 19.4p, up 14.1%
André Lacroix: Chief Executive Officer statement
“The Group has delivered double digit revenue and earnings growth leveraging our high margin and strongly cash generative earnings model. We have announced an interim dividend of 19.4p up 14.1% year on year, in line with our progressive dividend policy.
We are on track to deliver our full year targets. Our Products division delivered an excellent performance with an operating profit growth of 22% benefiting from a robust organic growth performance and from recent acquisitions. Our Trade related businesses delivered a solid performance while trading conditions remain challenging, as expected, in our Resources sector.
We operate in a $250bn global quality assurance industry with attractive structural growth prospects and looking forward we will continue to benefit from increased consumer demand for higher quality and more sustainable products, changing regulations, technological innovations, more complex supply chains, global trade flows and the increased focus of corporations on risk management.
We are well positioned to seize these exciting growth opportunities with our Total Quality value proposition that provides a superior service, offering global Assurance, Testing, Inspection and Certification solutions to our customers across multiple industries globally.
Our differentiated Total Quality Assurance growth strategy will move the centre of gravity of our portfolio towards the attractive growth and margin opportunities in the industry based on a disciplined approach to performance management and capital allocation to deliver sustainable growth and returns for our shareholders.”
OUTLOOK
The Group is on track to deliver robust full year revenue growth at constant currency. We will continue to benefit from the acquisitions made recently and from solid organic growth at constant currency, with Group margins broadly stable year on year.
We expect our Product related businesses to deliver robust organic growth, our Trade related businesses to report solid organic growth performance, while the market conditions will remain challenging in our Resource related businesses. Intertek will continue to benefit from the five acquisitions made since January 2015.
Looking further ahead, the global Assurance, Testing, Inspection and Certification industry will continue to benefit from exciting growth prospects driven by an increased focus of corporations on risk management, global trade flows, global demand for energy, expanding regulations, more complex supply chains, technological innovations and increased demand for higher quality and more sustainable products.
We are well positioned to benefit from the GDP+ organic growth prospects of the Total Quality Assurance industry in the medium to long term. We offer a high quality Assurance, Testing, Inspection and Certification service to our clients based on the depth and breadth of our technical expertise, our global network of state of the art facilities and our customer centric culture.
As of 07:09 BST, Monday, 01 August, Intertek Group plc share price is 3,625.00p.
