LONDON (ShareCast) - (ShareCast News) - Restore announced and completed a quick disposal of its Ireland document management operation on Thursday, selling the arm to Offsite Archive Storage for €36m (£27.8m) barely three months after it acquired it.
The AIM-traded company announced in the morning it had entered into a contract to sell Restore Document Management Ireland, which operates out of two leasehold facilities in Dublin. The division held the Irish assets of Wincanton Records Management, which Restore acquired in December for £57.3m.

Completion was announced to the market at 1237 GMT, just over five hours after the disposal was first announced.

"Restore's strategy is to be the market leader in mainland Britain in our chosen activities within office services, where we can generate substantial cost and customer synergies," said chief executive Charles Skinner.

"In view of the limited synergies between Restore Ireland and our UK operations, this disposal realises an attractive valuation for our shareholders and enables us to continue to focus on a market of which we have deep knowledge and where we can achieve better returns," he added.

In the year to 31 March 2015, when Wincanton owned the business, it recorded EBIT of €2.3m before central management charges, on revenues of €9.7m. Provisional gross asset values on 31 December were €21.3m, which included intangible assets created on acquisition of €17.4m.

Restore said the net proceeds of the disposal will be used in the short term to reduce net debt. It intended to redeploy the proceeds in due course to pursue other opportunities in its core Britain market.

The market appeared to approve of the move, with Restore's share price trending up for much of the morning in relatively choppy trading. At 1240 GMT, it was up 0.63% at 321p.

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