The People Infrastructure Ltd (ASX: PPE) share price certainly will be one to watch on Friday.
After the market close on Thursday, the workforce solutions company released its half year results and announced the surprise exit of its CEO.
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How did People Infrastructure perform in the first half?
For the six months ended 31 December, the company posted a 3.1% increase in revenue to $201 million. However, it is worth noting that $13.8 million of its revenue came from JobKeeper payments. Excluding this, revenue would have been down almost 4% to $187.1 million.
This ultimately led to the company reporting a 51.5% increase in normalised net profit after tax (before amortisation) to $14.8 million.
The People Infrastructure board has elected to continue paying dividends despite relying on government support during the half. It declared a 4.5 cents per share fully franked interim dividend, which is up 12.5% on the prior corresponding period.
At the end of the period, People Infrastructure had a net cash balance of $7.2 million.
CEO exit
Possibly weighing on the People Infrastructure share price today is news that the company has accepted the resignation of David Cuda as CEO.
Mr Cuda has resigned for personal reasons and will be leaving the company next month. He was only appointed permanent CEO in September 2020 after taking on the role in an interim capacity in January.
Former Managing Director, Declan Sherman, will be stepping into the role of CEO in an interim capacity while recruitment is conducted for a replacement.
Guidance
People Infrastructure remains cautiously optimistic on the outlook for the remainder of the financial year. It expects to achieve normalised EBITDA between $14 million and $16 million for the second half.
This will bring its full year normalised EBITDA to between $35 million and $37 million, which represents annual growth of 36% to 40%.
Incoming interim CEO, Declan Sherman, commented: "Looking forward into the second half of FY21, whilst we are aware that the economic and operational uncertainty relating to Covid-19 may still have implications for our clients, we note the general stability that is returning to the sectors which we serve and we continue to focus on driving growth in niches where we can demonstrate a clear point of difference in our product and services offering."
"We continue to look at both the opportunity to grow organically into new sectors as well as use our strong balance sheet for acquisition opportunities that would expedite that growth."
