Mitie Announces 21% Rise In Profits

British cleaning and maintenance company Mitie Group Plc announced a 21 percent rise in annual profit on Monday.The Bristol-based company, which cleans British landmarks the Houses of Parliament and the Tower of London, said it won a range of new contracts in the financial services sector over the year including HBOS and Barclays.

Mitie said pretax profit for the year ended March 31 increased to 70.6 million pounds on revenue 14.5 percent higher at 1.4 billion and compared with a Reuters Estimates forecast for pretax profit of 68-71.2 million pounds.

The company, which also supplies attendants to the Tate Britain art gallery, said its property services division benefitted from a number of contract wins to boost revenue by 32.8 percent to 285 million pounds.In facilities services, sales grew by 12 percent to 820.4 million after a year of consolidation and the addition of Cable & Wireless to its client base, the company said.

Mitie said it was upbeat about 2008, expecting more companies to outsource maintenance and combine the services they outsource from it as they try to save money in the face of tough economic conditions."We think a lot of our clients will put more of their outsourced services together which gives us the opportunity to grow through our existing contracts," Chief Executive Ruby McGregor-Smith said in a telephone interview.

The group's order book grew to 4.4 billion pounds from 4.1 billion last year with 78 percent of its 2009 revenues already secured, Mitie said.The company also increased its final dividend by 17.6 percent to 6p.Mitie bought two companies earlier this year, Catering Partnership Holdings and DW Tilley, a roofing contractor it bought for 7.5 million pounds to become Britain's No. 1 roofer, adding to 2007's purchase of plumbing firm Robert Prettie.

Mitie's McGregor-Smith said "around a 20 percent of property services' growth was acquisition related", adding that Mitie would "like to do the same kind of level (of acquisitions) again this year"