RENTOKIL GETS TO GRIPS WITH CITY LINK ILLS

“It has not been a big help,” said chief executive Alan Brown. “We didn’t get many new customers, just more business from existing ones such as Amazon.”

He said unpredictable surges in demand as customers switched deliveries brought extra costs such as hiring delivery drivers, adding: “It was disruptive to our operations.”

However City Link losses ­narrowed to £1.3million in the three months to September 30, down from £11.6million, after a major cost-cutting drive including depot closures and redundancies. Brown said the turnaround of the business, which has been a drag on the group, would continue with a return to profit later this year.

Overall Rentokil, which has issued a string of profit warnings in the past couple of years, posted an 81.5 per cent jump in pre-tax profits to £49.6million. Revenues fell 3.2 per cent but were boosted by pest-control work in Libya fighting bubonic plague. “Trading remains challenging in all our businesses. We are relying on self-help rather than an economic recovery to keep growing,” Brown said. The shares fell 7p to 105p.

Numis analyst Mike Murphy said: “There is still much to be done to restructure the group.”