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De La Rue Shares Fall With Slump In Profits

De La Rue Shares Fall With Slump In Profits

British banknote printer De La Rue saw its shares fall by more than 13% in early trading after reporting a slump in profits.

The company, which is more than 200 years old, blamed difficult market conditions for the 22% fall in operating profit to £69.5m in the year to the end of March.

The dividend paid out also fell from 42.3p a share to 25p.

De La Rue, which prints banknotes for more than 150 national currencies, as well as passports and identity cards in more than 65 countries, warned last year its underlying operating profit was expected to fall by about £20m.

Chief Executive Martin Sutherland, who joined the company in October, said: "These results are in line with our revised expectations and include the benefit of further operational efficiencies.

"However, these have been outweighed by the impact of the challenging market conditions on revenue and operating profit across the group."

And he expected the challenging market conditions to continue in the short term.

Mr Sutherland said: "At the moment, we are suffering with movement in the foreign exchange between the euro and sterling, which gives our European competitors a price advantage over us.

"That is putting a little bit of pressure on our profits in the short term."