The sharp rise in profits at Intermediate Capital, a provider of mezzanine finance, leveraged credit and minority equity, mainly reflects lower provisions for the impairment of assets which declined from £97.1m in the first half of last year to £53.1m.
It was also due to a marked improvement in the group's investment business, with last year's first-half loss of £14.7m turned into a profit of £88.2m. A strong equity market performance meant that 62 per cent of portfolio investments were performing better than a year earlier, that's up from 59 per cent at the March year-end, and net realisations of profitable holdings resulted in capital gains of £87m.
However, pre-tax profits on the fund management side fell from £22.8m to £16.9m as a result of lower fee income and costs associated with a share incentive scheme despite assets under management growing from €11.2bn to €11.7bn since the March year-end.
Numis Securities is forecasting full-year pre-tax profits of £145m and EPS of 25.2p, rising to £234.7m and 40.8p, respectively, in the year to March 2012 (from £106m and 34.6p in 2010).
| INTERMEDIATE CAPITAL (ICP) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ORD PRICE: | 329p | MARKET VALUE: | £1.3bn | |
| TOUCH: | 328-329p | 12-MONTH HIGH: | 353p | LOW: 233p |
| DIVIDEND YIELD: | 5.2% | PE RATIO: | 8 | |
| NET ASSET VALUE: | 302p | |||
| Half-year to 30 Sep | Pre-tax profit (£m) | Earnings per share (p) | Dividend per share (p) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2009 | 8 | 0.6 | 6 |
| 2010 | 105 | 17.2 | 6 |
| % change | - | - | - |
Ex-div: 1 Dec Payment: 7 Jan | |||
