Darty's (DRTY) shares jumped 5 per cent after the French-focused electricals retailer announced the sale of its struggling Turkish business alongside these half-year results. Having already sold its Spanish and Italian operations, Darty has just one other non-core business left - in the Czech Republic - which is likely to be sold by the financial year-end.
Darty's half-year performance wasn't as poor as the reported figures suggest, either. Strip out €25m (£21m) of exceptional costs, largely related to redundancy payments, and adjusted pre-tax profit rose 42 per cent to €9.4m - some €6m ahead of what some analysts had been expecting. That's significantly down to the French performance, where like-for-like sales were positive for the first time in three years - they rose 2.7 per cent - while the underlying retail profit rose 1.9 per cent to €26.9m. Darty has also announced plans to acquire French electricals website Mistergooddeal.com and to launch a franchise model. In Belgium and Holland, however, underlying sales fell 1 per cent and retail profit slumped 31 per cent to €1.1m. Combined losses at the Czech and Turkish businesses improved to €7.4m from €8.8m.
UBS expects full-year pre-tax profit of €47.5m, giving EPS of 4.4¢ (from €26.4m and 2.5¢ in 2013).
| DARTY (DRTY) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ORD PRICE: | 107p | MARKET VALUE: | £567m | |
| TOUCH: | 106-107p | 12-MONTH HIGH: | 110p | LOW: 37p |
| DIVIDEND YIELD: | 2.8% | PE RATIO: | na | |
| NET ASSET VALUE: | * | NET DEBT: | €253m | |
| Half-year to 31 Oct | Turnover (€bn) | Pre-tax profit (€m) | Earnings per share (¢) | Dividend per share (¢) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | 1.74 | 5.3 | -1.8 | 0.88 |
| 2013 | 1.72 | -16.3 | -3.3 | 0.88 |
| % change | -1 | - | - | - |
Ex-div: 5 Mar Payment: 2 Apr *Negative equity shareholders' funds £1=€1.18 | ||||
