Financial Highlights
- Revenues up 0.4% to £79.6m (2014: £79.3m)
• Fixed Line, Broadband and Data revenues grew 2.2%, driven by good take-up of high speed broadband
• Mobile revenues increased 9.3% boosted by 4G adoption and mobile data revenues
• Strong growth in Data Centre revenues, up 20.3%, driven by one-off equipment sales
• Global Solutions revenues declined 15.3% in line with expectations, due to lower SMS termination revenue, partially offset by higher core product revenues
- Underlying EBITDA increased 2.0% to £27.7m (2014: £27.1m)
- Underlying Profit Before Tax increased 27.9% to £16.6m (2014: £12.9m)
- Underlying diluted EPS up 19.4% to 14.53p (2014: 12.17p)
- Continued strong cash generation with operational cash flow at £25.4m (2014: £27.0m) equating to cash conversion from underlying EBITDA of 92%
- Net debt at the period end of £52.2m (2014: £53.7m), equivalent to net debt/EBITDA ratio of 1.9x
- Final dividend of 6.9p (2014: 6.6p) making 10.4p for the full year (2014: 9.9p), in line with the Company's progressive dividend policy
Operational Highlights
- 4G launched to pay as you go customers and adoption rates growing steadily
- Superfast broadband product "Ultima Plus" launched, offering customers download speeds of up to 80 Mbps and upload speeds of up to 10 Mbps
- Renewal of 5 year Isle of Man government contract
- Expansion of data centres continued with completion of phase 2 of the Greenhill Data Centre ("GDC") and its anchor tenant, in place from October 2015
Gary Lamb, Chief Executive Officer, said:
"I am pleased to report a solid performance for the full year which was in line with the Board's expectations. The highly cash generative core business of fixed line and mobile services continues to perform strongly, with revenue growth driven by good take up of our high speed broadband products and an increase in the number of mobile customers returning to Manx Telecom following our investment in 4G. During the year we completed the development of phase 2 of our Greenhill Data Centre and our anchor tenant moved in during Q4. We also made a number of changes to strengthen our Global Solutions business during H2 which has resulted in an increase in sales momentum as we have entered 2016.
"Looking ahead, we remain confident in the outlook for the group, reflected in our commitment to maintain our progressive dividend policy. We have developed a highly attractive market proposition, and I was delighted to renew our long term relationship with the Government of the Isle of Man. We continue to generate strong cash flow, which enables us to create value for shareholders, while continuing to invest in our infrastructure projects at an average of £10m per year over the last 3 years."
