Small caps round-up: Networkers International, Chrisite, i-design

13th Sep 2010 18:55

Telecoms and IT recruitment firm Networkers International has increased its underlying profit by 23% to £2.32m in the first half of 2010. Net fee income was 5% higher at £12.1m. Trading is better than it was in 2009 but it is some way off a full recovery. Net debt was £7.38m at the end of June 2010. Networkers is paying an interim dividend of 0.324p a share. Last year, it paid a special dividend of 2.1p a share. The expected total dividend for 2010 is 0.7p a share, which would be nearly four times covered by forecast earnings. Networkers has also bought back £350,000 worth of shares. Business services and stocktaking services provider Christie Group returned to profit in the first half of 2010 thanks to lower operating costs. Revenues were flat at £25.2m but salaries and other costs were much lower than in the first half of the previous year. A loss of £2.71m was turned into a profit of £283,000.There were contrasting fortunes for the two divisions. The business services side increased its revenues and moved back into profit. More valuations work is coming from lenders rather than buyers. The stocktaking side reported lower revenues and operating profit. New business was hard to come by and existing clients put off stocktaking. Net debt was £471,000 at the end of June 2010. Cash machine advertising technology supplier i-design has extended its contract with RBS and it now covers all of the cash machines at Tesco branches.