Business News
St Ives plc: Preliminary Results for the 52 weeks ended 27 July 2012
Thursday 04. October 2012 - St Ives plc, the UK's leading marketing services and print Group, announces preliminary results for the 52 weeks ended 27 July 2012.
Group Financial Highlights
Underlying* revenue up 10.3% to £327.4m (2011: £296.8m)
Underlying* profit before tax up 15.9% to £24.2m (2011: £20.9m)
Underlying* earnings per share up 8.0% to 15.61p (2011: 14.45p)
Earnings per share down 12.0% to 11.64p (2011: 13.22p)
Total dividend up 9.5% to 5.75p per share (2011: 5.25p per share)
Net debt of £13.4m (2011: net cash £16.3m)
All figures for revenue, profit and earnings per share are based on continuing operations.
* Before non-underlying items which comprise restructuring costs, provision releases, operating results of non-continuing sites, acquisition costs, adjustments to deferred consideration, net profit on disposal of property, plant and equipment, amortisation of acquired intangibles and other one-off items.
Operational Highlights
Continued success in implementation of strategic repositioning of the Group
Three acquisitions to enhance our marketing services offering, including:
– Response One, one of the UK’s fastest growing data marketing
businesses, in September 2011
– Pragma, a leading consultancy specialising in retail and consumer
markets, in September 2011
– Incite, an industry leading market research and insights
consultancy, in February 2012
Investment in Sponge, a leading mobile marketing agency, and Easypress Group (formerly Evolved Group), an eBook conversion software company
Further successful cost reduction initiatives across Print businesses, and investment in
digital production
Winning additional market share, with the Group’s new multi-discipline offering gaining traction with key clients including HSBC, Punch Taverns, Holland and Barrett and Johnston Press
Contract renewals with key clients including Sainsbury’s, Royal Mail and Heinz
Commenting on the results and the outlook for the Group, Chief Executive Patrick Martell said:
We have made continued progress in our transformational plan to build a substantial and broadly-based marketing services offering whilst moving away from commoditised print, and this has resulted in a significantly improved financial performance.
We have successfully integrated our three new Marketing Services acquisitions and are pleased with how they have performed to date.
St Ives’ future is in selling services that enable organisations and brands to deliver effective marketing, and in developing differentiated customer propositions which use a range of the capabilities from across the Group.
Trading conditions remain difficult, but we are in a strong financial position and will continue to invest to realise growth opportunities, to improve operational efficiencies, and to develop the business for the long term benefit of our shareholders