Entu shares plummet after first half results

Shares in the company were last down 28.07% at 39.2p, at 1310 BST.

During the period, the AIM-traded company made total revenue of £51.2m against £45.8m in the first half of last year.

On an underlying basis, gross profit improved to 15.7m from £14.9m, gross margin declined to 30.7% from 32.5%, and EBITDA improved marginally to £3.9m from £3.8m.

“Our home improvements division performed well overall in the first half,” said chief executive Ian Blackhurst.

“We made the right decision in exiting the solar business last year after the government reduced feed-in-tariffs, but managing the exit took more management time and cost than we had hoped.”

Blackhurst said this affected results in the first quarter, but the company recovered with its strongest ever sales performance in the second quarter.

“The exit from our solar business left us with £2m of central overheads to absorb into our continuing operations in the first half of this year.

“We had planned for growth in new business streams and targeted acquisitions to cover these overheads,” Blackhurst explained.

“However, growth has been slower than we hoped and we have scaled back on acquisitions to focus on the core business.”

In May, Entu said it acted decisively to remove £2.1m of cost from the business on an annualised basis, with a targeted £4m overall through further efficiencies.

“We have also refocused our strategy, restructured our business and reorganised our senior team.

“There is still work to do, and the long term impact of Brexit is as yet unknown, but focus in the second half will be on improving returns in the core home improvements business and continuing to drive efficiencies to position the business for growth in 2017,” Blackhurst added.

The company declared an interim dividend of 0.5p per share.