Sopra Steria, a France-based information consultancy and services firm, reported revenue on Friday of €2.01 billion in the first half of 2018, an increase of 6.5%, and 5.3% on an organic basis.

The group describes itself as providing one of the most comprehensive portfolios of end-to-end service offerings on the market: consulting, systems integration, software development, infrastructure management and business process services.

In the first half of the year, the group’s profits were hit by restructuring costs and “more unfavourable” seasonal effects.

Profit from recurring operations came to €99.2 million. That includes a €22.1 million expense related to share-based payments (€17.0 million in the first half of 2017), as a result of the renewal, in 2018, of the ‘We Share’ employee share ownership plan and of the long-term incentive plan set up for the group’s main managers.

Operating profit was €80.0 million after a net expense of €19.1 million for other operating income and expenses (compared with a net expense of €11.4 million in first-half 2017), which included €18.0 million in reorganisation and restructuring expenses.

The net profit attributable to the group was €38.4 million after deducting €1.1 million in respect of non-controlling interests. The decline compared with the first half of 2017 (€65.9 million) and was attributable to more unfavourable seasonal effects in the first half than in 2017; in particular, operating margin on business activity, share-based payments, reorganisation and restructuring costs, and tax expense were affected by this.

In France, revenue came to €849.1 million, representing growth of 5.9% and organic growth of 3.9%.  In the UK, revenue saw an organic decrease of 3.4% when compared to last year. In the Other Europe region, organic growth stood at 15.2% when compared to the same period last year.

The Other Solutions business segment (Human Resource Solutions and Property Management Solutions) reported organic growth of 4.0%.

During H1 2018, the group made a number of acquisitions including BLUECARAT, a German IT consulting firm, O.R. System, a software firm, and it-economics, a German IT consulting firm.

The group stated that it aims for organic revenue growth of between 3% and 5% for the full year 2018.

In trading on Friday, Sopra Steria shares closed at €158.40, down 8.5% on the day. Based on its current share price the company has a market value of €3.12 billion.