De La Rue Plc has announced an agreed bid for the Swedish company Inter Innovation AB, at the same time as reporting its half year results and a one for three rights issue at 350 pence against 445p in the market, down 3p on the day. The rights issue is expected to raise UKP160.3m and this will be used to finance the Inter Innovation acquisition, UKP94.7m, and leave some UKP65.6m for other acquisitions. Inter Innovation is a Swedish public company dealing in automatic teller machines and physical security equipment. Once the acquisition is completed – in January, Inter will form part of De La Rue’s Payment Systems Division. It had sales of UKP111.4m and operating profit of UKP10.4m in 1990, although De La Rue says that the ubiquitous recession has affected some markets in the current year. As regards De La Rue’s interim results, sales are up 0.97% to UKP175.8m, but pre-tax profits have grown by 9.89% to UKP31.1m, while net profits rose 14.2% to UKP20.9m. Security printing contributed UKP106m to turnover down from UKP114.2m last year, while payment systems grew to UKP69.8m, up from UKP59.9m. In terms of operating profit, the that at the security division declined to UKP19.9m from UKP20.5m, and payment systems contributed UKP7.9m, up from UKP6m last time.
