Pre-tax profits dip for HomeServe despite rising revenue

The Walsall-based home repairs group's pre-tax profit was down one per cent at £137.9 million on revenue of £1.13 billion for the year to the end of March.

The profit figure was reduced by a net exceptional charge of £7.6m. Adjusted profit before tax was up 12 per cent to £181m with total number of customers rising one per cent to 8.3m and retention of customers strong at 82 per cent.

Richard Harpin, founder and chief executive of HomeServe, said: "I am really pleased with our performance in the last 12 months, in which we continued to provide excellent service to our customers, deliver on our financial objectives and invest for future growth. I am especially proud of how everyone at HomeServe responded to the unprecedented challenges of Covid-19, adapting quickly and efficiently to new ways of working and going beyond the call of duty to help our customers.

"We have all become acutely aware of the importance of our homes over the last few months, which means that HomeServe's purpose of making home repairs and improvements easy has never been more relevant. With our resilient business model and dedicated teams, we look forward to being able to help more and more customers as the world emerges from lockdown."

North America customers rose 400,000 from 2018-2019 to 4.4m with adjusted operating profit up 23 per cent and in France new customers were up five per cent to a record 1.1m

At Checkatrade there was a 30 per cent growth in revenue to £38.5m and 32 per cent growth in web visitors to 23.6m.