Rolls Royce Holdings RR is to try and become a more trusted company with high standards of business conduct in an attempt to remedy past misbehaviour which produced disastrous 2016 results including a 49% fall in underlying profit before tax at constant exchange rates. On a reported basis that became a loss of £4.6b after taking into account penalties of 0,7 billion. Despite these appalling figures Rolls claims it performed ahead of expectations for the year as a whole and has managed to avoid cutting 2016’s final dividend. A modest performance improvement is expected for 2017.
Pendragon PDG claims it made significant progress during the year to 31st December despite a patchy performance in some areas. Used vehicle revenue over 5 years grew by 64% at an annual compound rate of 10.4%. In 2016 the rate came in at only 5.6% whilst like for like after sales revenue rose by 7.3% but total new vehicle revenue actually fell by 1.4%. Underlying profit before tax rose by 7.6% but total profit before tax fell by the same amount.
Mucklow (A&J) Group MKLW makes no comment at all on its half time figures for the 6 months to 31st December. Perhaps it prefers to let the figures speak for themselves, which they certainly do. Statutory pre tax profit slumped from £14.4m to £9.1m and basic earnings per share were down from 22.72p to 14.39p. The interim dividend is increased a smidgeon from 9.59p to 9.88p
Electric Word ELE is another company which sought transformation and it claims that by the year end it had succeeded, turning a loss of £2.3m in 2015 to a profit of £9.2m for 2016, including a £10.7m profit from discontinued operations. Like for like revenue rose 16% but continuing operations still doubled its losses over the year, which it ended with a cash pile of nearly £13m.