By Li-mei Hoang
LONDON (Reuters) - British outsourcing group Capita (L:CPI) is setting its sights on new markets after giving an upbeat assessment of its prospects on the back of a 14 percent rise in full-year revenue and 1.1 billion pounds ($1.7 billion) of contract wins for 2015.
Capita, which runs services ranging from the Ministry of Defence pension scheme to police radio systems, generates about 96 percent of its revenue in Britain but has begun to extend its reach through existing customers with German parent companies, such as energy group RWE (DE:RWEG).
It recently bought avocis, a customer call centre management company operating in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, to develop a platform for future growth and Chief Executive Andy Parker is open to more acquisitions in the region, he said after Thursday's results announcement.
The size of the German consumer market is almost double that of Britain's, making the customer-management space there "very, very attractive", Parker said.
The company posted underlying pretax profit up 13 percent to 535.7 million pounds on revenue of 4.4 billion pounds in the year to Dec. 31, adding that its bid pipeline has grown to 5.1 billion pounds.
Capita spent 310 million pounds on 17 acquisitions in the past year and said it expects to spend between 250 million pounds and 300 million pounds this year.
'CONFIDENT ON OUTLOOK'
"We are very confident on the outlook given the strength of the market and our bid pipeline to date " Parker said.
"The growth in the past year was pretty much across a whole host of our core markets and we are expecting low double-digit revenue growth again in 2015."
The company also raised its total dividend by 10 percent to 29.2 pence.
"We are enthusiastic about the recent changes at Capita, which have got the company back on track to the high-quality earnings we saw in 2002-2010," said Whitman Howard analyst Stephen Rawlinson, who has a "buy" rating on the stock.
"Revenue rose by 14 percent in 2014, of which 9 percent was organic, always an important number at Capita ... the pipeline is now back at 5.1 billion which should also help with sentiment."
Shares in Capita jumped to a five-month high of 12.26 pounds in early trading, but were down 1.9 percent at 11.73 pounds by 1003 GMT.
($1 = 0.6437 pounds)