IT services company Logica has reported revenue growth of 6%
for the first half of the year.
Shares in the company were boosted today after it announced
revenue rose to £1.8 billion pounds for the six months to June
2008. This represents an increase of 6% on the same period last
year excluding unusual gains such as currency swings.
It raised its full-year revenue growth forecast from 3% to
4%.
Operating profit, however, fell by more than a third to £29
million from £44 million because of exceptional items. These
include the costs of a
restructuring plan announced in April, which will see 1,300
redundancies - around 500 of them in the UK.
The adjusted operating profit, removing the exceptional costs,
rose 16% to £118 million.
Net profit was £6m, down from £150m in the same period last year
which was boosted by the sale of the Telecoms Products
business.
Logica's chief executive, Andy Green, said that the group was
seeing a slowdown in financial services and in some consumer-driven
sectors, but
government spending on IT was holding up.
"Energy and utilities also seem to have tons of money," he
said.
The company had made a good start to the restructuring, he said.
"A strong first-half performance and strong order intake makes us
confident that we can deliver revenue growth closer to 4 percent
than 3 percent."
Logica is paying an interim dividend of 2.4 pence a share, up
4%.
The company announced today that it has received a contract
extension from Volvo to test its IT applications and systems. The
car company had centralised its testing activities in a test centre
in Gothenburg, Sweden. Logica has been responsible for the delivery
of performance testing services from this centre for the past year.
The contract has been extended to also cover functional
testing.