Business
Full Year Trading and Dividend Update
Full Year Trading and Dividend Update.
About this update from Knights Group Holdings Plc
[{"type":"text","content":"\n \n \n RNS Number : 5366N\n Knights Group Holdings PLC\n 21 May 2020\n \n \n \n 21 May 2020\n \n Knights Group Holdings plc\n \n \n (\"Knights\", the \"Company\" or the \"Group\")\n \n \n Full Year Trading and Dividend Update \n \n \n A good second half performance; operational resilience in the face of COVID-19 \n \n \n Knights Group Holdings plc (AIM: KGH), one of the UK's fastest growing legal and professional services businesses, today provides a trading update for the year ended 30 April 2020.\n \n \n Full year trading update\n \n \n The Group expects to deliver revenue for the full year of circa £74.0m, representing a c.40% increase compared to the prior year (2019: £52.7m) and including organic revenue growth of approximately 10%. Underlying PBT\n \n \n (1)\n \n \n is anticipated to be circa £13.5m, a c.44% increase from £9.4m in the prior year on an IFRS 16 basis , and representing a marked increase in margin in the second half compared to the first, as anticipated. This reflects a strong performance through the second half of its financial year including through the initial lockdown period in March. However, the Group felt the impact of the lockdown in April due to the economic environment and a stalling of activity by other (counterparty) law firms during April which resulted in short term disruption to the Group's ability to transact on behalf of its clients. \n \n \n \n \n (1) \n \n \n Underlying PBT is before amortisation of goodwill; Underlying PBT and EBITDA are before non-underlying costs relating to acquisitions, non-recurring finance costs in both periods, restructuring costs in the reporting period, and non-underlying share based payments. The Board believes that these adjusted figures provide a more meaningful measure of the Group's underlying performance. \n \n \n Balance sheet and liquidity\n \n \n The Group has achieved a high level of cash conversion, as it continues its focus on delivering industry-leading working capital management through robust systems for and a strong culture of day-to-day cash collection, as well as the implementation of this approach across recent acquisitions. This resulted in a better than expected year end net debt position of £15.9m (31 October 2019: £17.1m, 30 April 2019: £14.1m), representing less than 1\n times Underlying\n \n \n (1)\n \n \n EB...