LONDON (ShareCast) - (Sharecast News) - James Fisher & Sons cut its interim dividend by 29% as first-half profit fell but the company said it expected trading to improve.
Pretax profit for the six months to the end of June fell 59% to £7.1m as revenue dropped 10% to £258.1m and the company wrote down £4.8m of assets. Underlying pretax profit fell 28% to £15.1m.

The FTSE 250 marine services company reduced its interim dividend to 8p a share from 11.3p a year earlier. The company suspended its final dividend for 2019 in March and has now scrapped that payout.

James Fisher said the combination of Covid-19 and the sharp drop in energy prices had caused delays to oil and gas and renewables projects, hitting revenue. The company took a £4.8m impairment charge for the value of its marine assets as part of £8m of one-off charges.

Profit fell across James Fisher's business with the exception of offshore oil where underlying operating profit rose 23% to £5.4m.

"Whilst the second half is expected to remain challenging and the outlook for our end markets is uncertain, we expect trading to improve through the second half, assuming no material deterioration in the Covid-19 situation," the company said.

"Global economies are slowly recovering, and the price of oil has partially recovered from the low point in April. We operate in diverse markets and have a wide geographic spread ... With this backdrop the board has declared an interim dividend of 8.0 pence per share, reflecting the reduction in underlying profit before taxation in the period."

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