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Nicholas Grove is a Morningstar journalist.

Companies covered in this report:

• Perpetual (PPT)
• Lend Lease (LLC)
• Boart Longyear (BLY)

Perpetual posts profit, dividend in line with forecast

Perpetual (PPT) has recorded a 7 per cent fall in underlying net profit before one-off items to $67.6 million for fiscal 2012, in line with Morningstar's forecast of $64 million.

Including costs associated with cost-reduction and transformation programs, statutory net profit for the year stood at $26.7 million.

The fund manager declared a fully franked final dividend of 40 cents a share, bringing the full-year payment to 90 cents a share. The full-year dividend also met Morningstar's expectations.

By division, negative industry fund flows led to a decline in Perpetual Investments' profit before tax (PBT) in fiscal 2012 to $72.0 million.

Perpetual Private's PBT fell by $5.0 million to $8.3 million, as a result of ongoing investment in the business and continuing caution among investors.

The Corporate Trust division's PBT fell by $4.1 million to $17.4 million, due to a continued decline in revenue sourced from the residential mortgage securitisation market, which remained largely closed during the year.

Commenting on the results, Perpetual CEO Geoff Lloyd said another period of weak market performance, with the All Ords index down 11 per cent in fiscal 2012, "had not helped demand for investment products and wealth advice".

"While the environment remains difficult, I have made it clear previously that we do not intend to wait for markets to turn," Lloyd said.

"We have implemented a significant cost reduction during the period and continued to work on driving growth in our businesses, but our overall performance in fiscal 2012 confirms the need for an accelerated and more fundamental change."

Lloyd said the company's Transformation 2015 strategy, which was announced back in June and aims to simplify and refocus Perpetual's operations, "is making good progress".

"While first steps have been taken towards fundamental improvement in fiscal 2012, it was not sufficient to match the difficult environment our industry currently is in," he said.