Smaller profit, bigger dividend for Paypoint

There was strategic success, but a dip in earnings for Paypoint, as it announced its half year results on Thursday.

The POS payment systems provider reported a 1.4% drop in revenue for the six months to 30 September, to £102.8m.

Operating profit before goodwill impairment was down 5% to £21.3m, and adjusted earnings per share was down 4.6% to 24.8p.

Paypoint outlined its ‘strategic’ success in the period, including signing on its first big six energy client and early talks with a housing consortium to collect customer payments.

It also began piloting a new tablet-based retail terminal.

“Overall the results are in line with our expectations for the first half, with the performance from retail networks offset by losses in mobile and online payments, which we expect to sell in the second half of this financial year as announced in May this year”, said chief executive Dominic Taylor.

“Offers on the Online Payments business have not met expectations and accordingly, we have impaired the entire goodwill on this business.”

Net revenue, which Taylor described as “revenue less the cost of mobile top-ups (where PayPoint is principal), SIM cards and other costs incurred by PayPoint, which are recharged to clients and merchants”, was up 2.4% to £59.3m.

Paypoint announced an interim dividend per share of 14.2p - a 14.5% rise on the corresponding period last year.