Capita halves debt as asset services sale completes
Capita
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16:40 18/04/24
Capita has completed the £888m sale of its asset services businesses, which will allow the government outsourcer to roughly halve its net debt.
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Although the FTSE 250 group said on Friday that completion of the sale of Capita Asset Services to Link Administration Holdings has gone through, just a few days after a 'nearly there' message, it admitted that "certain regulatory and other approvals" are still needed.
Finance director Nick Greatorex, who is standing in as interim CEO until new boss Jon Lewis begins at the start of next month, said: “We are pleased to have completed the disposal of our Capita Asset Services businesses. This means that we have successfully achieved the objective we set at the end of 2016 of disposing of these businesses and reducing our debt so that we are better positioned to support and invest in the future success of Capita.”
Capita put the profitable unit up for sale last December and agreed the £888m sale in June as it looks to trim net debt that stood at £1.6bn at the half-year stage.
Alongside the axing 2,000 jobs, the disposal is part of Capita's efforts to simplify the business as it struggles to cope with weak growth since a huge profit warning last autumn and then another in December sent its shares to their lowest in over a decade.
The CAS business was one of the biggest contributors to underlying profits but was offered up to mollify investor concerns about debts.