The Directors of HICL Infrastructure Company Limited announce the results for the year ended 31 March 2014.
Highlights
Graham Picken, Chairman of the Board, said:
“I am pleased to report a strong set of results, a consequence of successful, accretive acquisitions made over the last two years. The Group’s portfolio is performing well, with strong cash generation, which has enabled the Company to meet its dividend target for the year of 7.1p per share with good cash cover.
The Group made 16 new investments and six incremental acquisitions in the year, investing £230.0m net of disposal proceeds. This was funded by deploying proceeds from the March 2013 equity raising and from subsequent tap issues, and by utilising the Group’s revolving credit facility.
The Board is extremely pleased with the performance of the Group’s portfolio and we remain confident of achieving the target total dividend of 7.25p per share for the year to 31 March 2015. This will be paid (for the first time) by way of four quarterly interim dividends, the first of which is expected to be declared in July and paid in September.”
Tony Roper, Director at InfraRed Capital Partners Limited (the Company’s Investment Adviser), said:
“The Investment Adviser continues to focus on asset management and to exercise pricing discipline on new investments. The latter was illustrated by the acquisition of only four investments from the 18 auction processes in which the Group participated this year.
The prices of UK investments have increased to levels which are at times unattractive for the Group. Elsewhere, we have made progress in France and Ireland and the Group is in the process of making an investment in a PPP project in Australia. Whilst geographic diversity has certain benefits, the geographic composition of the portfolio is expected to remain materially the same. Despite competitive markets, we still believe we will be able to make further investments, both in the UK and, selectively, overseas.”
1The Company has prepared its accounts for the year to 31 March 2014 in accordance with IFRS, including IFRS 10 and the Investment Entity amendments, and 2013 comparatives have been restated. These require the Company to prepare IFRS financial statements which do not consolidate the project company subsidiaries and hence closely resemble the pro-forma Investment Basis financial reporting which have been presented in prior years.
2 includes £5.1m of future investment obligations
Copies of this announcement can be found on the Company’s website, www.hicl.com. The Annual Report and Consolidated Financial Statements for the year ended 31 March 2014 will be available to shareholders in early June, and an electronic version will be available from the Company’s website at that time.
For the full announcement, please click on the following link
http://hicl.com/assets/downloads/Annual_Results_RNS_21_May_2014.pdf
