Vitesse Media Plc
Interim Results
The Board of Vitesse Media plc (AIM:VIS), the online, events, research and publishing company, today announces its unaudited interim results for the six months ending 31 July 2010.
Commenting on the results, Vitesse Media’s Chairman, Sara Williams, said: “I am delighted to report that the Company continues to trade in line with market expectations and has maintained profitability for the six months to 31 July 2010, with an encouraging outlook going forwards”.
Highlights include:
- Profit before tax for the six months to 31 July 2010 was £33k, compared to a loss of £90k for the same period last year. EBITDA 2010 was £98k compared to breakeven for 2009.
- Substantial improvement in gross margins, which rose from 60.2% in the first half 2009 to 70.0% this year.
- Overheads were down 11.3% compared to the same period last year
- Like-for-like sales for the second quarter were up 3.5% compared to the second quarter in 2009
- Online revenues now account for nearly 40% of total revenues (35% for the half year to 31 July 2009 and 25% for the period to 31 July 2008)
- Strategic steps being taken to exploit our intellectual property more effectively which should lead to development of further, high-margin revenues
- The business has no overdrafts or loans, except the minor use of invoice discounting facilities.
Outlook
The management team is confident that the Company will continue to trade in line with market expectations and deliver a welcome improvement in profits for the full year to 31 January compared to the profits for the same period last year (£37k). The business is skewed towards the second half, an imbalance that is further exaggerated by the decision to stage a large event (Growth Company Investor Show) in this September, as opposed to June in previous financial years.
In the longer run, the board considers that there are still many opportunities to exploit and monetise our database and online activities leading to the development of further high-quality, high-margin revenues.
Review for the six months to 31 July 2010 and developments for the six months to 31 January 2011
Major strides have been achieved by all our websites, which on average have increased their organic traffic by 46% (July 2010 compared to July 2009). Individual site increases are as follows: Small Business +68%, Growth Business +21%, Growth Company +29%, What Investment +83%, Information Age +56% and M & A (www.mandadeals.co.uk) +18%. This increases the scope of the business to deliver bigger and more innovative campaigns and through the sites alone we reach over 325,000 entrepreneurial business owners, advisers and investors every month. This has also increased our capacity to deliver more network campaigns where we have spare inventory.
Work is being carried out on our databases which will allow us to target individuals more effectively and increase the revenues which we can obtain through targeted marketing of our own publications. This work will also enable us to increase the level of our high-margin research activities, through online surveys, market research, analytical studies and thought leadership pieces.
In the autumn, we will be re-launching two sites, What Investment.co.uk and TaxGuide.co.uk. The re-launch of What Investment.co.uk is to re-establish the online brand (which has shown our biggest increase in organic traffic). The aim will be to change from a features-led site to a multi-media news-driven platform. With the increase in content, improved structure and navigation, it is our intention to increase the traffic further and to drive up subscription revenue.
The valuable web address www.taxguide.co.uk, which we have owned for a number of years, has been underexploited and we will address this during the second half of the financial year. The target is to build an audience of over 100,000 users in this popular online search area, for which we own the rights to significant amounts of excellent intellectual property.
The improvement in gross margins for the period reflects the increasing use of online and inhouse marketing resources to distribute all content and marketing material and the profitability of our magazines has improved compared to last year with a switch in delivery to some customers from paper and print versions to digital versions.
Finally, our events programme continues to show great resilience in terms of sponsorship and there has been a welcome pick up in table sales/attendees.
I would like to thank all shareholders for their support and to highlight once again the role of our staff in continuing to deliver excellent editorial to our readers and premium campaigns on behalf of our customers.
Click on the link below to download the complete interim Report ending 31 July 2010.