Michelmersh Brick Holdings PLC on Wednesday declared a higher annual dividend and said it will resume share buybacks, as it reported a strong rise in profit in 2022.

The West Sussex, England-based brick maker said pretax profit grew by 18% to £11.4 million in 2022 from £9.7 million in 2021, on a 15% increase in revenue to £68.4 million from £59.5 million.

Michelmersh said it met market expectations for all its key adjusted results in 2022. Adjusted pretax profit was £12.5 million, up 15% from £10.9 million.

Michelmersh declared a final dividend of 2.95 pence per share for 2022, giving a full-year payout of 4.25p, up 16% from 3.65p in 2021.

It also said it will restart the share buyback programme that it had announced back in November but that had expired. Michelmersh said it will buy shares worth up to £2.8 million. The company appointed Canaccord Genuity Ltd to run the buyback programme, which will end by June 30.

Back in November, Michelmersh had announced a £3.0 million buyback, but it had only purchased £50,000 in shares by the end of December.

Michelmersh stock was up 2.4% at 93.20 pence on Wednesday morning in London, giving the company a market capitalisation of £89.2 million.

Looking ahead, Michelmersh said it had a ‘high quality’ opening order book for 2023, and order intake momentum continued in the first quarter. It didn’t provide the monetary value of the order book.

‘We remain mindful that there are significant challenges in the broader economy with elevated inflation and a higher interest rate environment potentially impacting demand across the construction industry,’ said Chair Martin Warner.

‘We continue to closely monitor these risks, but we believe in the fundamentals of our strategy of maintaining a broad customer base across multiple end markets and continue to see robust levels of order intake as a result.’

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