Quartix (QTX) continued to prioritise building up its fleet telematics business during 2019, while steering focus away from its lower-margin insurance operations. The upshot of this was a 39 per cent increase in new fleet installations to 43,387, and an anticipated 11.5 per cent fall in insurance installations. In turn, fleet revenues rose by 11 per cent to £20.8m, with insurance revenues tumbling 31 per cent to £4.8m. The latter division’s operating profits also halved to £1.6m – taking total group profits down by more than a fifth to £6.4m.
Quartix made further investments in its fleet businesses in the US and France. These saw vehicle subscriptions rise by more than two-thirds to 18,050 and 25,643, respectively. Meanwhile, in the UK, the subscription base climbed by 16 per cent to more than 100,000. With greater subscriptions come higher levels of repeat sales – and it follows that Quartix’s annualised recurring revenue grew by 9 per cent to £20.5m.
House broker FinnCap expects adjusted EPS of 11.2p for 2020, down from 11.7p in 2019.
| QUARTIX (QTX) | ||||
| ORD PRICE: | 430p | MARKET VALUE: | £205m | |
| TOUCH: | 420-440p | 12-MONTH HIGH: | 441p | LOW: 234p |
| DIVIDEND YIELD: | 1.5% | PE RATIO: | 38 | |
| NET ASSET VALUE: | 38p* | NET CASH: | £6.8m | |
| Year to 31 Dec | Turnover (£m) | Pre-tax profit (£m) | Earnings per share (p) | Dividend per share (p)** |
| 2015 | 19.7 | 6.0 | 10.7 | 6.0 |
| 2016 | 23.3 | 6.5 | 12.9 | 6.5 |
| 2017 | 24.5 | 6.6 | 12.3 | 6.7 |
| 2018 [restated] | 25.7 | 8.3 | 14.7 | 6.2 |
| 2019 | 25.6 | 6.5 | 11.3 | 6.6 |
| % change | -0.3 | -22 | -23 | +6 |
| Ex-div: | 2 Apr | |||
| Payment: | 1 May | |||
*Includes intangible assets of £14m, or 29p a share **Excludes special dividends (5.8p for 2019) | ||||
