St. Modwen sees strong rise in profits

Property regeneration specialist St Modwen has reported a 34% rise in pre-tax profit for the year ended November 30th.

Profit before tax increased from £37.5m to £50.4m on a reduced revenue income of £109.6m, compared to £121.4m the previous year.

Earnings per share increased from 18.6p to 21.7p.

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The firm announced a final dividend of 2.2p, bringing the total dividend for the year to 3.3p compared to 3p the previous year.

Chief Executive Bill Oliver said: "We have had a very successful year despite the challenges posed by the market conditions, significantly growing profits and completing transactions across the portfolio, and we have the foundations in place to deliver very good results in 2012.

"Our commercial developments in progress together with our active housebuilding sites will deliver property profits to underpin our results for 2012 and beyond. We can also see clear opportunities to add value to our assets through the planning process and our active management of our income producing portfolio is producing a resilient income stream.

"Although the wider economic environment remains unpredictable and there may still be further challenges for the sector we are confident that our asset portfolio and development pipeline will provide us with many opportunities to add significant value for our shareholders."

The share price rose 6.99% to 153.00p by 13:10.

NR