Clarke boosted by 40% leap in profits

T Clarke, the electrical engineering company, yesterday outlined plans to pay another special dividend after announcing that pre-tax profits had jumped nearly 40 per cent in the first six months of the year.

Shares in the company, which counts the BBC and the London Stock Exchange among its client base and which also said it was confident it would meet profit forecasts for the year as a whole, shot up 38p to close at 603p. John Daly, finance director, said: "It's the fourth time [the company has paid a special dividend] in the past six years. It's been the group's policy that when we build up a cash balance and we don't see an immediate need for it... we give it back to the people to whom it belongs - the shareholders."

T Clarke, which has about £23m of cash but expects to finish the year with about £15m, said it would pay a special dividend of 10p a share on top of the half-year dividend of 8p a share.

Mr Daly said the company was continuing to find trading tough in London but noted that conditions remained rather more buoyant outside of the capital, where it earns around 35 per cent to 40 per cent of turnover. "Our regional businesses are doing very well at the moment," he said. In the six months to 30 June, the company made a pretax profit of £6m, up from £4.4m in the same period a year before.