Discontinued divisions drag Tavistock down

Tavistock Investments revealed the financial pain of its now-shuttered operations in a half year trading update on Thursday.

The investment firm saw revenue from continuing operations grow sizeably, to £15.96m (up from £1.34m last September), with gross profit sitting at £3.31m.

It was Tavistock’s discontinued operations and administrative expenses, however, that dragged it down, with the two costing a combined £4.88m.

Tavistock’s loss after tax was £1.52m - larger than last year’s £908,000 - or a basic loss per share of 0.61p,

The group completed the integration of Duchy Independent Financial Advisors during the priod, which it purchased in May 2015, with executive chairman Oliver Cooke keen to see this division grow.

“The results for the period under review have inevitably been adversely impacted by the losses generated by Financial Group's now discontinued business activities”, Cooke said.

“However, as the integration process has now been completed, we can look forward to reporting improved trading results in the second half of the year.”