By Michele Maatouk
Date: Tuesday 27 Jun 2023
LONDON (ShareCast) - (Sharecast News) - Telecom Plus - which trades as Utility Warehouse - hailed record full-year profits, revenue and customer growth on Tuesday as it hiked its dividend.
In the year to the end of March, adjusted pre-tax profit rose 55% to £96.2m on revenue of £2.5bn, up from £967.4m a year earlier. Adjusted earnings per share were up 57% to 99.2p and the company lifted its full-year dividend to 80p a share from 57p a year earlier.
Telecom Plus pointed to record organic growth, with customer numbers up 22% to 886,579 and a 24% increase in the number of services supplied to 2.8m, as people looked to save on bills amid the cost-of-living and energy crisis.
Co-chief executives Andrew Lindsay and Stuart Burnett said: "This has been an outstanding year for the company: the fundamental strengths of our business model have reasserted themselves and delivered a strong outcome for all our stakeholders - particularly for our customers who benefitted from the lowest energy prices in the country throughout the year, saving over £30m on their bills.
"The recent fall in the Ofgem Price Cap is welcome news for UK households, although energy prices remain substantially above historical levels. When this challenge is combined with reduced government support, rising mortgage costs and continuing high inflation, the need for households to make savings across all their essential utilities has never assumed such high importance. As the UK's only multiservice utility provider, UW remains uniquely positioned to help households to do exactly that, and we have seen a strong start to the current year, with recent customer growth putting us firmly on track to meet our goals."
Utility Warehouse is a multiservice utility provider, which offers bundled household services - energy, broadband, mobile and insurance - through one account.