Pre-close trading statement

RNS Number : 1425V

Ebiquity PLC

26 January 2017

 

Ebiquity Plc                                          

("the Company")

Pre-close trading statement

Ebiquity plc, the leading independent marketing analytics specialists, today announces its pre-close trading statement for the year ended 31 December 2016 ("the year").

Ebiquity has continued to grow revenue with an increase in total unaudited revenues of 9%. Group margins are broadly in line with those achieved in 2015, with anticipated mid-single digit growth in operating profit and earnings. Ebiquity continued to benefit from the weakness of sterling, particularly in the second half of the year, with two-thirds of revenue denominated in non-sterling currency. FX revenue gains across the year amounted to £4.5m.

The Company remains on track with the milestones outlined in our Growth Acceleration Plan, including the roll out of our effectiveness services to Asia Pacific and the continued development of our digital products and services.

The Marketing Performance Optimization ("MPO") practice continues to be a rapidly growing part of our business and performed in line with management expectations. We outlined in our growth acceleration plan our intention to expand our Marketing Effectiveness offering to Asia Pacific, and we were pleased to see that in the second half of the year we commenced our first contract in Australia.

The Media Value Measurement ("MVM") practice, outside of our contract compliance business, has grown strongly across all regions in line with management expectations. However, in our contract compliance business (which represents a minority of MVM revenues) we have experienced a slow-down in revenue due to clients taking more time to act on the findings of the US Association of National Advertisers' ("ANA") Media Transparency reports. We continue to view the ANA Report and its findings as a long term growth driver for the MVM practice.

Within the Market Intelligence ("MI") practice revenues from our platform business (Portfolio), which accounts for over 90% of MI revenue, stabilised year on year outside the US where revenue reflected pressure on client budgets. Our new Ebiquity Portfolio platform was launched in September and has now been successfully rolled out to most clients globally. Additionally, we launched our market leading Portfolio Digital service in Asia Pacific which will roll out across Europe and North America in the coming weeks. Portfolio Digital distinguishes between direct and programmatically bought adverts on desktop and mobile, captures HTML5, rich media, embedded video, and tracks behaviourally targeted adverts.

The start to 2017 has seen a noticeable pick up in new business activity and consequently the Company has better revenue visibility as compared with the prior year. This provides management with early confidence in achieving its operational and financial objectives for 2017.

In light of the continuing revenue growth, cash generation and the visibility into 2017, the Board anticipates the continuation of our progressive dividend policy.

The Company will release its preliminary results for the year ended 31 December 2016 on 28 March 2017.

26 January 2017

Enquiries:

Ebiquity plc Michael Karg (CEO) Andrew Noble (CFO)	020 7650 9600
Instinctif Partners Matthew Smallwood Guy Scarborough	020 7457 2020
Numis Securities Limited Nick Westlake (NOMAD) Toby Adcock (Corporate Broker)	020 7260 1000

 

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