Helphire back in profit

Helphire said it expects its results for the year ended 30 June 2010 to show a strong recovery in performance with revenues of £304.2m (2009: £374.1m) and operating profits of £21.4m (2009: £4.7m).

It said it would report pre-tax exceptional costs of £13.8m (2009: £143.8m) including £13.2m for restructuring related charges for redundancy, property impairment and reorganisation expenses.

Adjusted pre-tax profit would be £13.9m (2009: £5.2m loss) and statutory profit before tax would be £0.1m (2009: £149.0m loss).

It said it had cut overheads by £42.3m and had £17.4m of direct operating cash inflow versus a £6.4m outflow in the prior year. Total net debt stands at £165.3m, a reduction of £77.5m since 30 June 2009.

Other Key Performance Indicators:

• 81,700 open cases at June 2010, down 27,300 versus 109,000 at June 2009
• 32,700 cases (40%) in legal process at June 2010 with 17,000 (52%) issued into court versus 27,600 (25%) and 8,000 (29%) at June 2009
• Debtor days of 220 at 30 June 2010 (2009: 226)
• Revenue generating fleet utilisation in the year to 30 June 2010 of 87.1% versus 71.1%
• 10,300 fleet units at June 2010, including 1,500 corporate hires due for return and disposal, versus 16,500 and 4,800

Richard Rose, chairman, said: "This has been a significant turnaround situation and I am delighted with the progress demonstrated by these performance indicators."