Reuters Holdings Plc, saw its fortunes continue to improve through the second half of the year, though the growth wasn’t quite as spectacular as the raw figures would suggest. The 19% growth in turnover was boosted by currency fluctuations and the actual growth was closer to 8%, Reuter acknowledges. Meanwhile the reported 27% increase in net profits was boosted by last year’s 24m hit from the Australian Tax Office. Excluding this, net profits grew by 15%. The company has made an admirable attempt to reduce its large cash reserves, spending hand-over-fist on businesses, capital spending and research and development while buying back 25m shares. The company spent a total of 62m on snapping up firms – it will be more once the purchase of Teknekron and Quotron have cleared their respective regulatory and due dilligence hurdles. As a result, the net cash balance, which stood at 710m the end of 1992, has fallen to 450m and interest from income fell by 9% to 60m. A gung-ho statement from chief executive Peter Job described conditions as good in both developed and emerging markets and predicted double digit revenue growth for 1994, excluding price increases. The organisation’s share price jumped 97 pence to 20.08p each, partly on the robust predictions and partly on the news of a share split. The directors intend to break each ordinary share into four and split American Depository Shares into two. Geographically, the most growth came from the US operation where revenues grew by 35% to 226m. The UK and Ireland together grew by 9% to 285m with continental Europe up 10% to 705m. The proposed final dividend of 19.8 pence increases the total dividend for the year to 26p, up 23% from last year.
