By Najat Kantouar
Capita said swung to a pretax loss, dragged by business exits and costs that included a hit from a cyberattack.
The U.K. outsourcing business said Wednesday that its pretax loss for 2023 was 106.6 million pounds ($135.4 million) compared with a profit of GBP61.4 million a year earlier.
Adjusted pretax profit was GBP56.5 million compared with GBP73.8 million, falling well short of analysts’ expectations of GBP81 million, according to a consensus forecast provided by the company.
Capita’s adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization–a metric that strips out exceptional and other one-off items–rose to GBP133.3 million from GBP131.9 million, missing with analysts’ expectations of GBP234 million.
Revenue fell to GBP2.81 billion from GBP3.01 billion, while adjusted revenue grew to GBP2.64 billion from GBP2.61 billion, compared with analysts’ expectations of GBP2.675 billion.
At Dec. 31, the company’s order book stood at GBP5.88 billion, flat on a year earlier.
The company said it took a GBP20 million hit from the cyberattack launched against it last March.
“We need to deliver a rapid reduction in our cost base and are on track to deliver the net GBP60 million annualized cost savings, from Q1 2024 as announced in November. Today we are announcing further material efficiency improvements of GBP100 million to improve our competitive position,” Chief Executive Officer Adolfo Hernandez said.
Write to Najat Kantouar at [email protected]