Essentra confirmed its £150m return to shareholders and maintained guidance as it posted lower full-year profits after the disposal of its packaging business.
The company on Wednesday reported a 37% fall in adjusted pre-tax profits to £7m. Revenue rose 12% to £338m. Shareholders will receive £90m via a special dividend of 29.8p a share and a £60m buyback.
Adjusted operating profit grew 12% to £63.7m. Discontinued post-tax losses were £152.7m compared with a £33.2m profit in 2021, including the impairment of goodwill and other intangibles for the packaging business of £182.7m
“The business has the ability to manage volume impacts through implementation of pricing actions, and careful cost management, validated by historical through-cycle margin resilience,” Essentra said.
Distributors have continued to show signs of destocking impacting the US in particular, with improvements in China, and European trade continued to be robust. New order intake was around 8% ahead of 2022 on a like-for-like basis, it added.
Reporting by Frank Prenesti for Sharecast.com
