Baycorp Holdings result retreats

Press, 18 March 1989, Page 31

Baycorp Holdings result retreats

Baycorp Holdings be-fore-tax profit for the six months ended December 31 was down 49.7 per cent on the corresponding six months of the previous year.

The Tauranga-based credit-reporting firm reported a before-tax profit of $2,760,000,. compared with $5,495,000 in the previous corresponding period.

The result was on turnover 1.6 per cent up at $11,891,000 (compared with $11,700,000). Tax took $601,000 ($1,484,000) giving an after-tax profit of $2,159,000, down 46 per cent on the previous year’s $4,011,000. Extraordinary items cost $96,000 (compared with a gain of $39,000). The bottom-line profit, at $2,063,000, was 49 per cent down on the previous period’s $4,050,000. Shareholders will be

paid a 2c a share interim dividend, 8 per cent, on May 29. The individend will be fully imputed. The dividend in the previous corresponding period was 4c a share, with the payment included on a one-for-five bonus issue.

Baycorp’s chairman, Mr Neil McLaughlin, said the company would not achieve the 50 per cent rise in full year profit he previously forecast. Baycorp reported a S9M result for the year ended June 30. The forecast assumed that the S3M spent on setting up in Australia and on the Baynet computer information network in New Zealand would be capitalised over three years, Mr McLaughlin said. Directors had since decided to expense the sum in the interim result. "Given the state of the market, we’d rather have it up front and write if off

as an expense," he said, the Press Association reports. “By putting it in as an expense, it makes the result more of a cash profit than a paper profit.”

The fall in interim profit also reflected the end of business which flowed from Baycorp’s purchase of SS6M in book debts on a past fuel conversion loans scheme run by the Ministry of Enery, Mr McLaughlin said.

Profit contributions on the domestic debt collection operations had increased in the December half, he said. The business was now grouped into three profit centres: Bay Collection Agency operates 18 offices; Baynet Systems provides information reporting sendees; Bay Collection Agency, Pty, incorporates the five debt-col-lecting branches in Australia.