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RWS Holdings PLC on Thursday announced its intention to launch a share repurchase programme, and reported a decline in interim profit, while revenue grew slightly.
Shares in RWS were up 14% at 258.26 pence each in London on Thursday morning.
The Buckinghamshire, England-based technology-enabled language services provider said pretax profit for the six months ended March 31 fell 13% to £28.7 million from £32.9 million the year before, as amortisation of acquired intangibles grew 15% to £19.3 million.
Revenue rose slightly by 2.5% to £366.3 million from £357.3 million a year prior. This attributed to further development in RWS’s key growth areas eLearning and Linguistic Validation.
The company also noted an increase in software as a service proportion of licence revenues in its Language & Content Technology division to 33% ‘moderated overall divisional revenue growth’, but said it ‘builds long-term value’ for financial 2024.
RWS declared an interim dividend of 2.40 pence per share, up 6.7% from 2.25p per share a year prior.
Looking ahead to the current financial year 2023 ending September 30, RWS said it expects a second-half weighting to its performance, and forecasts revenue be in line with market expectations of £741.6 million to £751.2 million, compared to £749.2 million in financial 2022. Further, it expects to meet the adjusted pretax range of £121.3 million to £128.3 million, at least 5.5% lower than £135.7 million a year prior. The consensus of £126.6 million would be a decline of 6.7% annually.
The company added that rapid development in artificial intelligence and large language models are creating ‘clear growth opportunities.’
Chief Executive officer Ian El-Mokadem said: ‘With our strong balance sheet and cash generation, we are actively pursuing acquisitions that could accelerate delivery of our medium-term plans. We are encouraged to see a much more exciting pipeline in the last six months which provides us with attractive opportunities to deploy our cash and we are at an advanced stage with a number of bolt-on opportunities.’
RWS also announced on Thursday its intention to launch a share buyback programme of up to £50 million, which will be completed ahead of the company’s annual general meeting in February 2024.
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