PayPoint makes strategic and profit progress

Mobile and online payments company PayPoint saw its profits increase in the first half, as it focuses on initiatives to broaden its retail customer base.

For the six months ended 30 September, revenue slipped 1.1% to £101.7m, compared to the same period last year, and net revenue fell 1.5% to £58.4m.

However, if excluding the online payments business, which was sold in January, net revenue was up 5.1%, revenue by 2.7%, transactions by 0.1% and transaction values by 0.4%.

At the end of the period total retail network sites had increased to 39,635 and Collect+ sites to 5,960.

Adjusted operating profit increased 15.6% driven by growth from Romania, the mobile business and deferral of costs.

The company declared an interim dividend of 15p per share, an increase of 5.6%, and has made the first of three additional dividend payments of 12.2p.

As part of the company’ strategy to refocus PayPoint on retailers it launched the PayPoint One terminal, which combines an electronic point of sale function, card payments and PayPoint bill payment services, in September to cater for the convenience store market.

Chief executive Dominic Taylor said the overall results are in line with expectations and that the PayPoint One has been well received and will drive further growth in retail services, which is central to its strategy.

“Whilst we will continue to improve the client offering, our main development focus will continue on enhanced versions of our new EPoS product and implementing organisational improvements and process efficiencies to improve our retailer offering.

“Looking ahead to the second half, we expect to rollout PayPoint One to achieve around 4,000 sites by the end of the financial year, to develop Advanced EPoS and to step up our installations of ATMs and card payment, requiring increased costs as expected, to deliver our full year results."

At the end of September the company had £49.6m in cash, up 7.8%, and an undrawn credit facility of £45m.

Shares in Paypoint were up 1.54% to 1,056p at 0910 GMT.