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Investing.com -- Compass Group (LON:CPG) reaffirmed its full-year outlook on Wednesday after posting a slight earnings beat for the first half of its fiscal year.
The company’s shares fell over 3% after the report.
The U.K.-based catering giant reported a pretax profit of $1.28 billion for the six months ended March 31, up from $1.20 billion a year earlier. Underlying operating profit, which excludes exceptional and one-off items, rose 11.6% to $1.63 billion, just above the $1.60 billion.
Compass reported underlying earnings per share (EPS) of 64.5 cents, slightly ahead of the consensus estimate of 64.2 cents.
The company also saw a modest increase in its underlying operating margin to 7.2%, supported by operational efficiencies and scale benefits.
Organic revenue rose 8.5% during the period, in line with consensus estimates, while Compass secured $3.6 billion in new business.
The company announced an interim dividend of 22.6 cents per share, a 9% increase from the prior year’s 20.7 cents.
Looking ahead, Compass said it still expects high single-digit growth in underlying operating profit for the full year, with organic revenue growth topping 7.5% and further margin improvement.
RBC Capital Markets analysts described the print as a "fairly unremarkable set of H1 results with an unchanged outlook."
"We think that continued strong organic revenue growth and sustained margin progress are already baked into consensus, and we currently see the stock as broadly fairly valued vs. both peers and the wider sector in this context," they noted.