These two UK shares released all-new trading statements on Wednesday. Here’s the key information investors need to know.
A rising UK share
Shares in insolvency litigation specialist Manolete Partners (LSE: MANO) have halved in value over the past 12 months. This is because a strong economic recovery in the UK, and significant government support to ailing businesses, has hit the number of new cases experienced by the firm.
But Manolete’s share price edged 1% higher on Wednesday following the publication of full-year financials. Revenues soared 49% during the financial year to March, to £27.8m. Meanwhile, Manolete’s retailed share of gross cash from completed cases rocketed 113% to £6.8m. And the UK legal share completed on a record 135 insolvency cases last year. It made 198 new case investments too, another all-time record.
The impact of that government assistance, along with increased staffing costs and a reassessment of the value of in-process cases during the pandemic, caused pre-tax profit to slump 26% to £7m. But Manolete expects the number of cases to rise as Covid-19 lockdown measures are rolled back and the government’s emergency suppression of insolvencies ends in September.
“With the widely reported large backlog of insolvency cases, we expect new case enquiries to increase over the foreseeable future and we will continue working hard to deliver outstanding returns to both the creditors of insolvent estates and our investors,” Manolete commented.
Good momentum
The Marlowe (LSE: MRL) share price has fared much better than Manolete Partners during the past 12 months. The UK health and safety share has ballooned almost 80% in value as its aggressive approach to M&A has paid off. The business rose 1% on Wednesday too following the release of its own full-year financials.
Revenues rocketed 15% year-on-year during the 12 months to March, to £192m. And margins rose to 16.2%, from 13.1% previously. This was thanks to the positive impact of acquisitions, steps taken to improve productivity, and the leveraging its back-office infrastructure. All this meant that pre-tax profit soared 31% over the period to £17.1m.
Marlowe – which provides safety and compliance software and services — noted too that current 12-month run-rate revenues sit at £280m, 83% of which is recurring in nature. The company made 15 acquisitions in total last year and has continued spending heavily on M&A to supercharge future earnings growth. It’s made a further eight acquisitions since April to improve its presence in key markets.
Today, Marlowe affirmed its plan to generate run-rate revenues of £500m and adjusted EBITDA of £100m by financial 2024. The UK share said it hopes to achieve this “through deepening our market share across our sectors, broadening our activities across the business-critical arena, strengthening our business via operational improvements and delivering on our digital strategy.”
And for the current financial year? Marlowe said it’s enjoyed a “strong start” with “good” levels of organic growth in the high-single-digit percentages across its businesses.