aiLimited makes $4.3m attributable net profit

Perth-based company aiLimited has made an attributable net profit of $4.3 million for the financial year 2005-06, a 56 per cent increase from the previous financial year.

The profit comes after a $187,086 loss from discontinued operations.

The full text of an aiLimited announcement to the ASX is pasted below:
The directors of aiLimited are pleased to announce a profit after tax from continuing operations of $4.52m for the 2006 financial year. This equates to 3.46 cents earnings per share and is a 118 per cent increase on that achieved from continuing operations in the 2005 year.

This strong performance and the company's healthy cash position enabled the board to pay fully franked dividends of 4 cents per share for the year.

Pre tax profit at aiAutomotive grew by 40 per cent in 2006 despite sales revenue falling by 3 per cent. Significant productivity gains have been extracted by the management team as well as a rebalancing of the sales mix within the business. Sales revenue is likely to fall further in fiscal 2007 as some of the high volume products, in particular Monaro components, have come to the end of their model life. New products with lower sales but higher margins are being introduced to mitigate the loss of this work. aiA has also recently acquired Henderson Components another successful automotive component manufacturer offering a different product range to aiA. In addition, management have focussed on diversifying the customer base to lessen the dependency on the largest customer Holden. The combination of these factors should enable aiA to maintain its level of profitability in the 2007 financial year.

aiConstruction reported a 239 per cent increase in pre tax profit for the 2006 year. This was achieved on a 115 per cent growth in sales revenue. Like most other mining based construction businesses with exposure to the booming WA economy aiC is enjoying very favourable operating conditions. The settlement of the acquisition of Cimeco Group, announced recently, will help aiC achieve record earnings expected to exceed $5m pre tax in the 2007 financial year.

aiLtd continues to operate with very modest corporate overhead costs. The net corporate cost of $1.48m in 2006 was 11 per cent lower than in 2005. This reduction was helped by an interest income contribution from cash reserves held on deposit.

Shareholders are aware of the company's stated strategy of growth via acquisition. As discussed at the 2005 AGM the company broadened the target sectors for possible acquisition beyond automotive. A number of industrial, manufacturing and construction businesses were assessed to identify opportunities that fitted with the organisational capabilities of the aiLtd group. One investment was made in Motive Energy Pty Ltd in which aiLtd has taken a 36 per cent shareholding. Motive is a provider of an integrated range of products and services that enable motor vehicles to run on compressed natural gas. Together with Alinta, also a 36 per cent shareholder, aiLtd is driving the commercialisation of this product range which offers major fuel cost savings to operators of CNG vehicles. Whilst relatively new to Australia this technology is widely used in Europe, the USA and South America.

The directors are confident of strong growth in earnings for 2007. We look forward to discussing the outlook and strategy moving forward with shareholders at the AGM in November.