LONDON (Reuters) - Maintenance specialist Mitie <MTO.L> posted an 11 percent rise in full-year profit and said the outlook for the year ahead was good as private firms and public sector bodies continue to farm out work to cut costs.
The group, which cleans the Tower of London and supplies attendants to the Tate Britain art gallery, reported a pretax profit of 78.4 million pounds on revenues 8.2 percent higher at 1.52 billion pounds for the year to the end of March 2009.
The consensus forecast on Reuters Estimates showed analysts, on average, expected the company to deliver a pretax profit of 78 million pounds for the year.
Mitie, which increased the final dividend by 15 percent to 6.9 pence, said its order book grew by 11.4 percent to stand at 4.9 billion pounds at the year-end.
It added that margins rose to 5.3 percent during the year from 5.1 percent in 2007/08.
(Reporting by Rhys Jones; editing by Mark Potter)