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Publishing company Informa reported a rise in profit as revenue was underpinned by its merger with UBM and a boost from favourable currency moves. The company did, however, flag the impact of the coronavirus on its events-related businesses.
'We are facing a 2020 impact from Covid-19 in our events-related businesses and so we have used our strong customer and supplier relationships to swiftly deploy a material postponement programme, shifting our events calendar to later dates in 2020,' Informa said.
The company said it expected to incur some incremental investment in venue capacity, customer marketing and other duplicative costs of re-scheduling and virtualisation, for the brands affected by coronavirus outbreak.
For 2019, statutory pre-tax profit increased 13.0% to £318.7m and revenue increased by 22.0% to £2,890.3m.
'In 2019, there was a first full year of contribution from UBM, compared to just six and a half months contribution in 2018,' the company said.
The company proposed a final dividend of 15.95p per share, up from 14.85p per share, representing a 7.4% increase on the final dividend in the prior year.