BOOTS shares shone yesterday as the High Street multiple chemist and healthcare group came out with full-year profits above expectations and a confident trading statement that bucked the bearish market trend.

Chairman Sir Michael Angus revealed that the Advantage loyalty card is in profit after launch and redemption costs totalling #30m. Boots enjoyed an overall 3% rise in pre-tax profits last year to #553m and in the City its shares rose 28.5p to 984p - a market

capitalisation of #8970m.

Chief executive Lord Blyth, who will swop the role with Sir Michael after the annual meeting, refused to comment upon speculation that the Do It All chain is to be sold. With improved like-for-like sales, that business was profitable on turnover of #3094m.

Boots the Chemist boosted fourth-quarter same-store sales by more than 5%. In spite of increased competition from the supermarkets, the Boots NHS

dispensing activities increased

market share.

There was a strong performance from beauty products where Boots is gaining market share from Bodyshop. The move into financial services through selling health, dental and travel insurance is thought by some analysts to be a likely winner as it will cost Boots very little to run and result in a large commission fee on

policies sold.

High Street outlets are not losing much traffic to the town peripherals, which have a 50% higher turnover. Another 30 edge of town stores are to be built to complement the 21 already up and running. This will result in the creation of up to 1500 additional jobs.

While progress in Holland has been chequered, it is ''all systems go'' in Thailand, where the six stores are to be followed by another 30 or so during the next two years.

Boots Healthcare International made a small profit overall. The #176m Hermal skincare acquisition in Germany brought in a #6m profit for five months.

Contract manufacturing now sells about 35% of turnover outside the group and was helped by Boots' facilities in Europe offsetting the strong pound.

The good news continued with Halfords , which benefited from an increasing proportion of own brand sales, and at Boots Opticians.

The company ended the year with net debt of #149m but with interest covered over 30 times.

It generated an extra #90m cash flow from operations at #606m while the debt was due to the #401m special dividend paid last autumn. Group turnover from continuing operations improved by almost 12% to #4976m.

Lord Blyth made it clear that Boots is not likely to make any major acquisitions and more likely to return cash to shareholders later this year.

The dividend total has been raised almost 9% to 22.3p.

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