Operating profit on ordinary activities of €86.5m, impacted by lower financial income, in line with expectations

APRIL GROUP recorded consolidated sales of €778.6m in 2013, corresponding to an increase of 0.7 % on a reported basis and of 1.6 % at constant exchange rates, with a decrease of 0.5 % in brokerage commissions to €499.0m and an increase of 2.9 % in insurance premiums to €279.6m.
Operating profit on ordinary activities reached €86.5m, down €6.3m. This is attributable mainly to a decline of €5.8m in financial income, due to a low interest rate environment combined with prudent portfolio management. Adjusted for the financial income, the Group's operating performance would have been stable.

The current operating margin came in at 11.1 % of sales; the Health & Personal Protection division posted a margin of 17.7 %, i.e. a slight decrease of 0.6 points compared to 2012, while the Property & Casualty division presents a margin of 2.2 %, down by 1.7 points.

Looking at the detail:

The Health & Personal Protection division recorded an operating profit on ordinary activities of €88.2m, i.e. a decrease of €3.7m, attributable to the financial income.
The Property & Casualty division recorded an operating profit of €6.5m, down by €4.5m, due notably to the ongoing rationalisation of the direct sales network and to the non-recurring integration costs of the assistance business.

After corporate income tax of €32.3m and a loss from discontinued operations of €1.0m, the Group’s share of net profit was €51.0m, down 4.4 %, representing a net margin of 6.6 % of sales. APRIL has a solid balance sheet, with consolidated shareholders’ equity of €550.3m and adjusted net cash of €190.5m.

In that context, the Board of Directors has decided to propose a dividend per share of €0.50.

For 2014, the teams will be concentrating all their efforts on initiating the return to growth and improving the Group's profitability.

All regulated information is available on www.april.com/finance.

APRIL GROUP will publish its sales for the 1st quarter of 2014 on 28 April 2014 after the market closes.

APRIL

26 February 2014