Information technology company ASG Group has announced a dip in full-year profits, reflecting a transformational year for the company which invested heavily in the cloud computing sector over financial year 2012.
ASG announced today a 7.9 per cent fall in net profit to $14.6 million for the 12 months to June 30, on the back of a flat revenue result, which came in at $150.3 million, slightly down from $153.3 million in FY2011.
Managing director Geoff Lewis said that after adjusting for the company’s investment in the cloud computing sector, ASG’s underlying performance was in line with its competitors.
“The investments we have made are carefully considered and are critical to ASG’s future earnings growth and leadership position in cloud services, and these have necessarily impacted this result,” Mr Lewis said in a statement.
“The IT services industry is undergoing one of the most profound periods of fundamental change in its history, led by ‘new world’ technologies such as cloud computing and software as a service.”
Mr Lewis said ASG would pay a final dividend of 3 cents per share, taking its full-year total to 5 cents per share.
He said the market for traditional IT services remained tight, but nonetheless expected growth in FY2013.
“The difficult economy is a threat to traditional suppliers, but a competitive opportunity for ASG as more organisations look to transformational IT to cut costs and drive business imperatives,” Mr Lewis said.
“The heightened bid activity we saw in the second half of FY12 is expected to continue into this year and is already feeding our pipeline of opportunities, particularly for our unique cloud computing services.
“Having made the commitment in the last few years to invest in the necessary assets – and which we integrated into our business during FY12 – we are confident these will underpin our earnings growth into the future.”
At close of trade today, ASG stocks had fallen by 10 per cent, trading at 76.5 cents.
