Cable & Wireless Worldwide £94m loss
CABLE & WIRELESS Worldwide tumbled to a £94million loss at its first results as an independent company yesterday but vowed to dial up growth by saving businesses thousands of pounds.
The telecoms group, which split from Cable & Wireless in March and sells services to mainly UK businesses and the public sector, said its pre-tax loss for the year to March 31 had been hit by £10million demerger charges and a one-off £143million pensions obligation.
Chief executive Jim Marsh said without these charges underlying earnings soared 32 per cent to £431million. Revenues were flat at £2.3billion. Marsh said it was a “good year” and that market conditions were improving. The shares rose 31⁄2p to 791⁄2p.
“Businesses didn’t want to spend anything last year but now they are willing to pay if they see a strong business case for doing so,” said Marsh.
Higher-priced services such as data protection are proving most popular, as is video-conferencing equipment. Analysts were split. One took comfort from the positive outlook but Investec’s Jonathan Groocock described the results as “mediocre”.