Many reasons to grin
NQ firm continues expansion
NINE new facilities, growth in revenue and after tax profit are the highlights for Townsville company 1300 Smiles.
Its annual report for the 2017-18 financial year was released on the Australian Stock Exchange yesterday.
It shows 1300 Smiles has acquired practices in New South Wales and regional Queensland in the past financial year.
The last acquisition was an established practice in Noosa, with the transaction completed in July. It also has practices at Cairns Central and Smithfield shopping centres.
Managing director Daryl Holmes said it had been a good year for the business with the new acquisitions.
“It is tough out there. We have low single-figure growth, that’s sort of at inflationary levels,” he said.
But Mr Holmes said 1300 Smiles was looking at opportunities and wanted to continue its growth.
Revenue was up 8.8 per cent to $39.3 million, with net profit after tax up 5 per cent at $7.6 million. In a letter to shareholders Mr Holmes highlighted a measure of the company’s success – net profit after tax as a percentage of statutory revenue.
“While this measure, at 19.4 per cent, is down slightly on the previous two years, it remains above the level of all earlier years,” he said. “This measure is dragged downward … in years in which we make a large number of acquisitions; to deliver only a slight decrease on this measure in a year marked by numerous acquisitions is a good result indeed.”
Mr Holmes said it was a very challenging economic environment but it was slowly getting better, locally, regionally and nationally.
“We have seen positive year-on-year improvements on all key measures including revenue, EBITDA, net profit after tax, earnings per share and dividend per share,” he said. Growth would continue. “There’s no particular area we’re looking at but we are looking at expanding,” he said.