PRE-TAX profits at Bridge of Allan outsourcing firm Castle View Ventures received a significant boost in the year to the end of March thanks to the value of one of its investments increasing by £9.1 million.
Turnover at Castle View, whose interests include managing leisure centres for local authorities and providing catering management software, rose by 11 per cent during the year, from £175.7m to £195.6m, while profits were up by 36% from £13.3m to £18.1m.
The profitability figure was boosted by a £9.1m gain in the revaluation of the company’s 2012 investment in Edinburgh biopharmaceutical business NuCana, which uses technology to help improve the outcomes for patients with cancer.
Castle View managing director Martin Bell noted that while the gain on its investment in NuCana had not been realised it showed that the £450,000 it had originally invested in the business was bearing fruit.
Sports and Leisure Management (SLM) is by far the largest part of Castle View’s overall business, generating £177m of total revenues during the year, up from £157.5m the year before.
Writing in the company’s annual accounts, Mr Bell said that that part of the business had benefited from the commencement of contracts to run leisure facilities for local authorities including the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, Slough Borough Council and Warwick District Council.
However, he noted that the “mobilisation costs” associated with these contracts had led profits in that part of the business to dip from £10.5m to £9.8m.
“The directors believe that the market for outsourced leisure management services will continue to grow in the foreseeable future and that the group is ideally placed to take advantage of that growth and provide good value, high-quality services to an increasing number of local authorities and facility users,” Mr Bell said.
Elsewhere, Mr Bell said that the £5.6m investment in a new bakery facility at Cambuslang-based pizza business Uin Foods did not result in an expected uplift in profitability, with the disruptive effect the new bakery had on production leading the unit to make a loss of £275,000. In the previous year it made a profit of £447,000.
Similarly, Mr Bell said that Inhouse Manager, which provides catering management software for public sector catering operations, had been impacted by a challenging market for contract wins.
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