Final Results
Online Travel Corporation PLC
17 January 2002
ONLINE TRAVEL CORPORATION Plc
Trading Statement for the year to 31 October 2001
and announcement of Conditional Placing to raise £1.85 million
Chairman's Statement
The Directors of Online Travel Corporation Plc ('OTC' or the 'Group') are
pleased to present the trading results for the year ended 31 October 2001.
During the period OTC has made further progress towards its goal of creating a
real, sustainable and profitable content and technology driven e-travel
provider.
The period has seen growth in pro-forma transactional value to £69.7 million
(see note 6), representing overall growth of 109% on the previous year. These
gross sales yielded an increase in gross profit margin of 13.9% (2000: 12.7%)
representing an increase in actual gross profit to £9.7 million, a rise of
141% on the same period last year (2000: £4.0 million). This is in part a
result of our focus on the high growth and high margin travel sectors.
In the second half of the year, the Group made a profit of £0.5 million before
web development and depreciation cost (2000: H2 loss £1.8 million). This
represents another milestone in achieving profitable growth and demonstrates
the merits of and the successful execution of our business model.
During the year we accelerated our organic growth with the acquisition of
selected e-travel business to add value in terms of products, technology
content and customers. We continue to integrate these products to provide the
most comprehensive range of e-travel products and services in the UK.
Thanks to the tireless efforts and talents of our employees, we have built a
considerable client and customer base and established OTC as a major technolgy
based travel business. By investing in technology and electronic travel
content and products, we believe we have created the most comprehensive range
of travel products and services over various electronic platforms.
The growth in revenues and investment in new products and technology has been
achieved with an overall net cash outflow during the year of £1.2 million.
We expect our growth to continue, and whilst not underestimating the
challenges that lie ahead, we believe we will benefit from many more
technology driven efficiencies in 2002.
Tommaso Zanzotto
Chairman
Major Strides in OTC's Business Model
* 110% growth in annual transaction value for the year to £69.7 million
(2000: £33.2 million)
* 142% increase in pro-forma gross profit for the year to £9.7 million
(2000: £4.0 million)
* 168% increase in actual gross profit for the year to £7.4 million
(2000: £2.7 million)
* 423% growth in unique visitors in the year to 6.8 million (2000: 1.3
million)
* Acquisition cost 17 pence per user (2000: 38 pence) versus industry
average of £4.20
* Customer acquisition cost of £4.05 (2000: £8.10) versus industry
average of £35.20
* Growth in actual gross margin percentage for the year to 16% (2000:
15.2%)
* Fastest growth in high margin leisure division with pro-forma annual
sales up 325% to £37.8 million (2000: £8.9 million)
* Corporate division sales up 28% to £19.7 million (2000: £15.4 million)
* Trade division sales up 25% to £9.9 million (2000: £7.9 million)
* New media and incremental revenue up 119% to £2.4 million (2000: £1.1
million)
* £6.7 million in net assets at 31 October 2001 (including £2.1 million
in cash)
* Established as major technology based travel business in the UK
* Proprietary technology and largest most diverse range of e-travel
products
Operational review
The Group has made considerable progress during the year.
The Directors' are pleased with the overall growth of 110% in the annual value
of transactions to £69.7 million including acquisitions (2000: £33.3 million),
and are encouraged by the growth of 142% in the associated annual gross profit
margin to £9.7 million (2000: £4.0m).
Our organic growth in turnover of 76%, excluding acquisitions, demonstrates
the progress we have made and the strength of our core products. We believe we
outperformed the European e-travel sector in terms of organic growth and this
growth was achieved spending a fraction of our competitors marketing and
operational expenditure. This has enabled OTC to become the first European
e-travel business to achieve two significant milestones in the second half of
the year - cash positive from operations and operating profit before web
development costs and depreciation. These important milestones demonstrate the
benefits of our business model.
Despite a challenging time for the travel industry in 2001, particularly post
September 11, our growth in revenues continued to accelerate during the year.
We now believe our UK metrics in the last quarter (over 3 million unique
visitors with transactional value of £19.6 million) position us as one of the
largest e-travel businesses in the UK.
The Group also made significant strides towards its objective of becoming a
major technlogy based travel business. We have already built, in our opinion,
the most diverse and comprehensive range of e-travel products in Europe. We
will continue to increase the breadth and quality of our products and this
should enable the Group to increase revenues from existing customers and
attract new clients and customers.
More clients, visitors and customers
We have expanded the quantity and quality of clients and now operate over 100
travel sites for a wide range of portals, media groups, retailers and other
travel businesses. Our focus on quality clients led to renewed contracts with
our largest clients including Freeserve, Tiscali, BT, Virgin.net and The
Telegraph and we have new clients including Associated New Media's new travel
site, thisistravel.com, The Mirror and Yell.com.
Our clients in the travel sector have grown, including peers such as Expedia,
Deckchair, Travelselect and the TV Travel shop. This demonstrates the quality
and unique nature of our offering, particularly our new dynamic packaging
facility, which we believe to be the first in Europe.
During the year some 6.8 million users visited our sites (2000: 1.3 million),
with acceleration in the growth in the second half of the year to 4.7 million,
and over 3 million in the last quarter alone. The number of annual
transactions increased to 312,000, almost 2.5 times that of the previous year
(2000: 127,000).
More online transactions
OTC customers have the choice to book online or via our call centres. Though
we will continue to offer this choice, our focus will be on driving more and
more business online, particularly for low value or less complicated
transactions, therby achieving the benefits of electronic booking,
During the year the annual value of transactions initiated online across all
sectors increased to £42.7 million or 61.3% of total annual value of
transactions. However in 2001 only £10.1 million (14.5%) of transactions were
converted online without call centre assistance, and this online conversion
remains one of our challenges. There has been an encouraging increase in
online bookings since the year end as a result of new technology and a wider
range our products offering of live availability.
As OTC and our suppliers make it easier for more travel products to be
transacted online, we expect the triple benefit of improved customer
experience, reduced call centre costs and administrative cost savings from
pure electronic processing.
Increased brand awareness
Our model enables large portals, media groups and retailers to provide
e-travel services tailored to the needs of their customers. As the number of
our clients and customers grow, so does the awareness and value of the Online
Travel Company brand. This brand awareness gives customers confidence to
transact when associated with the client brand, say The Telegraph, with OTC as
an 'Intel inside' type quality guarantee.
Our own brands include bargainholidays.com, a2btravel.com, ferrybooker.com and
specialist sites including leading ski (1ski.com;ifyouski.com), golf
(ifyougolf.com) dive (ifyoudive.com) and various activity, youth and explore
sites. These brands all have direct customers, but are being integrated into
our client sites on a white label basis, adding to the quality of the content
and products on offer.
This brand within a brand approach allows us to achieve a low customer
acquisition cost and build awareness of these brands to give the customer
sufficient confidence to transact.
Technology and product development
Our investment in technology is geared to build scaleable systems that
encourage online sales at the front end and reduce costs at the back end by
automating procedures. The most robust and user friendly technology is however
of little use without access to the products, which we continue to acquire.
During the year we procured the most comprehensive and diverse range of
e-travel products and services, but the slow migration of these products into
our booking systems has prevented customers from booking many products without
call centre support. Significant progress has been made since the year end,
and our focus continues to be the rapid integration of more products into our
dynamic booking systems.
Our company remains focused on leveraging the core benefits of technology and
we remain focused on deploying our technology resources to realise the
following objectives:
1. Attract more clients and customers
Client personalisation. We have enhanced our technology to allow more
personalisation of client sites to match products with the client user
profile. This enables our large brand clients to offer a dynamic range of
products to their customers under their own brand.
Customer interface. New technology has enhanced the design and functionality
of each site to allow users to find the products they require easily. As a
result of our vast range of products, we currently have twelve different
component booking systems. In some cases it is difficult for inexperienced
users to easily find the travel products they require. In January we launched
a new front end search facility that with intelligent logic to direct
inexperienced users to the component part of the sites by the products they
require.
2. Increase the quality and quantity of our products
Flights. Our new proprietary flight booking systems allows electronic update
of fares and access to price and availability information for over 520
airlines, comparing the best of published, consolidated or special fares as
part of a single dynamic search. We also incorporate charter flights.
Hotels. We have developed a hotel booking system to enable wholesalers, large
hotel chains and independent hotels to import and maintain rates, images and
descriptions with real time availability. We currently give users access to
net or inclusive tour rates at over 20,000 hotels via our dynamic hotel
booking system and expect to increase this to over 35,000 hotels by Spring
2002.
Villas. We have developed a villa and vacation home booking system that gives
online access to over 40,000 villas, private holiday homes and apartments. We
expect to release the first phase of this in the first quarter of 2002.
Build-your-own. Our proprietary systems on schedule flights, hotels and villas
have been developed to allow customers the flexibility to package component
parts dynamically and build their own itinerary . Users can check availability
of each component at the best rate available, often as part of a package at
discrete prices where users will see a package price rather than component
prices. This allows the consumer to save on the aggregate cost of each
component. The average margins OTC earn in tour packaging are considerably
higher than on published fares. At present we believe we are the only business
in Europe with this technology.
We have also built integrated online car hire rental booking, plus ferry and
rail booking system and working with third parties have integrated the wide
range of charter based package holidays and the most comprehensive range of
specialist services for ski, golf, dive and activity sites.
Our move into the growing vacation rental market, with an exclusive European
agreement with the world's largest provider, Resortquest, will enable us to
position a wide and diverse range of products to our clients and customers.
3. Building our clients advantage
We provide all core travel components including schedule and charter flights,
hotels, villas and vacation rentals, car hire, cruise, ferry and rail services
plus ancillary products such as insurance and airport transfers.
OTC faces competition in each core travel area but most competitors in each
sector focus on building their own brands as opposed to leveraging others. OTC
compete in all core travel areas and offer our clients unique services such as
dynamic packaging and our specialist villa, ferry, ski, golf, dive or activity
products. This broad range of core and exclusive travel products, enable our
clients to add value to their customers, using one source, OTC.
We will continue to increase the quality and range of our core and exclusive
products that gives our clients the advantage, satisfies existing customers
and attracts new clients.
4. Integrate sales and administration
Our diverse range of travel products brings challenges in integrating
different sales data with the back end. As such we have developed our own
bespoke mid-end processing and accounting system to automate more accounting
and fulfillment processes. The first phase of our mid-end system went live in
January 2002 and we expect significant operational efficiencies and technology
driven cost savings to arise.
Many more of our internal systems have been enhanced during this time,
including our CRM systems for order processing and customer database
management. We also released new content management tools for building
holiday, airline fares and accommodation packages, which allow data entry
staff or external product providers to release new products to any web site
within minutes.
Since year-end new technology has been introduced in the call centre to allow
efficiencies and enable fulfilment of low transaction value items to be
out-sourced. The new mid-end administration system to automate processing from
sales data went live in January 2002. We expect this to give improved service
to customers and technology driven fulfilment savings.
5. Strengthen our supporting infrastructure
In order to cope with the growing number of users, our web-hosting
infrastructure has been significantly enhanced. The growth in the number of
users and the integration of businesses acquired during the year required
investment in supporting infrastructure for dramatic historic growth and
anticipated growth in 2002.
Travel Division
Leisure and new media
As expected, our leisure and new media divisions experienced the highest rates
of growth. Annual transaction value increased to £37.8 million for the year,
representing growth of 325% on previous year (2000: £8.9 million). New media
and ancillary revenue grew by 119% to £2.4 million (2000: £1.1 million). The
downturn in online advertising industry rates has resulted in a lower than
expected level of growth in this area, but the diverse and specialist nature
of our sites allows businesses to have more focused or targeted marketing
campaigns.
The period has seen a considerable increase in the number of users and
customers and enhancement in functionality, content and product range have
increased the products and revenue via partner sites. The acquisition of EMAP
Digital Travel division and If You Travel during the year enables us to add
considerably to the content and technology in the charter market, plus ferry,
ski, golf, dive and activity, and whilst pleased with progress to date there
is still considerable opportunity for more integration into OTC own and OTC
client sites.
Corporate travel
Our corporate division achieved growth in transactional value to £19.6
million, representing an increase of 27% on the previous year (2000: £15.4m).
Events of September 11 combined with general economic slow down in USA and Far
East has had a significant impact of the corporate travel sector, so we are
especially pleased that our corporate business via Joint Venture Travel,
recovered better than most and achieved such growth.
The corporate division successfully moved to mixed pricing structure to
reflect the changes in airline pricing and commission. During the year we
expanded core services to Interpublic Group, Gartmore Investment Management,
Medical Research Councils, SMI Conferences, UK Atomic Energy Authority and the
Strategic Rail Authority and successfully integrated the business formerly
managed by Corporate Wings Travel Club.
The Group continue to offer its leisure travel services to corporate travel
staff via corporate intranet, though take-up rates are relatively slow.
Since the year end we have secured more new clients including the fulfilment
of the new National Heath initiative for the transportation of patients for
treatment overseas.
Trade concessions
Providing concessions to travel employees continued to grow its annual
transactions to £9.9 million, an increase of 25% on the previous year (2000: £
7.9 million). New services since the year end for airline staff, Airperx, and
employee groups such as Travelex, enhance OTC's status as the market leader in
this niche sector. Since the end of the year, we have launched of a new
service for airline staff, Airperx and this, together with the expansion of
British Airways Preferred Agents Travel Club has increased the number of
members of our trade concession clubs to over 120,000 travel industry
employees.
During the year, through our joint venture with Concorde International Travel,
we now supply all Accor staff in Australia with travel benefits, and this is
indicative of the global reach of online trade travel concessions.
Cost reductions
During the year we implemented the first phase of our program to reduce
central or fixed overhead costs and the variable costs of sales and
fulfilment. The program had a marginal impact in the last few months of 2001
and variable costs increased at a lower rate than our gross margin. However,
we expect a more tangible impact in direct costs in 2002.
In addition to savings generated through economies of scale, we expect a
higher proportion of transactions to be booked online with no call centre
assistance. Our technical developments include a new integrated front-mid-end
system launched since the year end to improve efficiency in the call centre,
administration and generally in management of electronic data. We have yet to
see the benefits of many of the technology driven savings and we expect
central and variable costs to reduce proportionally as sales grow.
Acquisitions and integration
In December 2000 OTC acquired Viva Travel Dun Laoghaire Limited to provide
local travel product and to service our growing number of Irish portals and
media partners.
OTC also acquired 50% of Breakaway Travel Club Pty Ltd to develop the travel
trade concessions sector in Australia, in a joint venture with a major travel
provider in Australia, Concorde International Travel Pty.
In June 2001, OTC acquired the assets of EMAP Digital Travel ('EDT') for £2.8
million. The purchase includes all proprietary technology and content, and the
trade of some of the UK's leading e-travel businesses, including
Bargainholidays.com, an online retailer of charter based package holidays,
A2Btravel.com, a scheduled flight information and travel site, 1Ski.com and
Boardit.com, specialist winter sports sites, and Ferrybooker.com, a
proprietary online ferry booking service.
This specialist technology and content compliments OTC's core products and
makes a compelling offering to the sites we operate. EDT sites will continue
to operate as separate brands, and these sites are already being enhanced by
OTC technology, product and supporting infrastructure. All sites are expected
to benefit from the cross-sale of these complimentary products. Relocation of
former EDT occurred within two months of acquisition and migration of
technology to specialist sites, albeit considerable benefits to be achieved
from more integration.
On 31 October 2001 OTC acquired the business and assets of If You Travel
Limited ('IYT'), for an initial consideration of 1,257,000 ordinary shares at
a value of 17 pence per share. This acquisition includes the trade of the ski,
golf, dive and adventure sites including Europe's largest specialist ski site
ifyouski.com, formerly Complete-Skier. IYT operates specialist ski and golf
sites for many leading portals. The acquisition also includes all the fixed
assets, proprietary technology and content, plus cash assets net value of £
95,000 after reorganisation provisions.
The integration of EMAP Digital travel services and If You Travel specialist
products has strengthened our proposition to customers and clients. OTC will
continue to extend these specialist ski, golf, dive and adventure travel
services through our client sites and we beleive there are still considerable
benefits from further integration of these products.
Conditional Placing
OTC today announces that it has conditionally placed 10,882,354 new Ordinary
Shares at a price of 17 pence per share, raising £1.85 million gross, subject,
inter alia, to shareholder approval and to admission of the shares to trading
on AIM (the 'Placing'). The proceeds of the Placing, net of expenses, will be
used for the purpose of providing working capital, including that required to
be maintained by the Company for regulatory purposes.
It is anticipated that notice of an Extraordinary General Meeting to approve,
inter alia, the issue of shares pursuant to the Placing will be dispatched to
shareholders shortly. Subject to approval at the Extraordinary General
Meeting application will be made for the Placing shares to be admitted to
trading on AIM and dealings are expected to commence on 15th February 2002.
Outlook
2001 was undoubtedly the most challenging year for travel industry in recent
memory, given the events of September 11. Still, industry observers point out
that the online travel sector generally recovered faster than the traditional
sector and independent research still predicts considerable growth.
OTC is well positioned to benefit from this growth and it is particularly
reassuring that we specialise in the areas of highest growth, that is dynamic
packaging, vacation property rental and specialist activity, golf, ski and
dive areas. These sectors also generate the highest gross profit margin.
OTC is also well positioned to take advantage of the intention of core travel
suppliers to driive motre business online. We add value to travel suppliers
by offering the benefits of fast and cost efficient electronic distribution,
and provide access to a huge customer base, spread accross different
demographic groups that demand a different range of products. This diverse
sales mix appeals to core suppliers.
Our growing status as a major European technology based travel business will
bring new challenges.We must remain focused to stay ahead of our competitors
in terms of the quality and range of the products we offer.
We will continue to explore other opportunities to consolidate the market and
add revenues and content.
We expect growth in revenues to continue, by selling more products to existing
customers and from new clients, at improved gross profit margins. With a
higher percentage transacted online, we expect a proportionate reduction in
costs as a percentage of sales.
We have conditionally placed £1.85 million to comply with Travel Regulatory
working capital requirements based on the growth expectations to March 2003.
We plan to build on becoming the first in the e-travel sector to acheive
positive cash flow from operations and operational profit in the second half
of 2001. We have been encouraged by the growth in revenues since the end of
the year and the continued migration of customers to pure online transactions.
We look forward to reporting continued growth in revenues and net margins to
bring the Group to early profitability.
Financial Review
Total transactional value for the Group during the year to 31 October 2001,
including acquisitions and associates, rose 109% to £69.7 million (2000: £33.3
million). Gross profit margins on annualised sales increased 142% to £9.7
million (2000: £4.0 million).
Statutory turnover increased to £46.1 million (2000: 8 months - £18.2 million)
and statutory gross profit margin increased to £7.39 million (2000: 8 months
- £2.8 million). The gross margin percentage on statutory turnover increased
to 16% (2000: 15%) due to the largest area of growth in high margin leisure
sector ( pro-forma annual sales were up 325% to £37.8 million from £8.9
million in 2000) and an increase in high margin technical and new media
income.
The number of annual transactions increased to 312,000, almost 2.5 times than
the previous year (2000: 127,000) although the average value per transaction
declined to reflect the change in sales mix from high value corporate travel
to lower value but higher margin leisure travel.
The net loss before taxation of £2.57 million (2000: 8months - £2.49 million)
is in line with Directors' expectations.
Operating expenses
Call centre support and customer relationship management costs increased to £
3.38 million (2000 annual: £1.28 million) as part of the drive to improve
service levels and conversion rates. Development of dedicated call centre
needed to be made in advance of anticipated growth, although there were
challenges during the year. Introduction of enhanced technology in call centre
and benefits of scale will reduce this cost as a proportion of sales value and
yield higher conversion rates in 2002.
Sales and marketing costs of £1.13 million (2000: annual £1.04 million),
includes our clients' gross profit and revenue shares, represents a reduction
to £4.00 per customer compared to £8.10 in 2000 and 89% lower than the
industry average of £34.50 per transaction.
General administration and overhead costs increased to £2.97 million (2000
annual: £1.50 million) reflecting the costs of expanding the senior management
team and supporting infrastructure to meet increased volumes. The increase
includes the cost of integrating acquisitions and implementation of
back-office efficiencies and we expect further operational efficiencies from
the introduction of new technology solutions to our business processes.
Web development and content costs of £1.58 million (2000: annual £1.14
million) reflected the increased range and integration of travel products and
content on our own and client sites. A further £0.89 million (2000: 0.35
million) in depreciation and amortisation charges incorporated acquisitions
and the development of propriety systems' technology.
Share Capital
On 17 November 2000 52,626 shares were issued in part consideration for the
acquisition of Viva Travel Dun Laoghaire Limited. On 8 December 2000 200,000
shares were issued in part consideration for the acquisition of 50% of the
share capital of Breakaway Travel Club Pty Limited. On 22 March 2001 300,000
shares were issued to British Telecommunications plc as part of a strategic
partnership agreement.
On 19 June 2001, 9,200,000 new ordinary shares in OTC issued at £0.25 per
share were issued in part consideration for the EMAP Digital Travel assets via
a vendor placing. A further 800,000 new ordinary shares at £0.25 per share
were allotted pursuant to a cash placing. The consideration for the If You
Travel assets was satisfied in part via the issue of 1,257,000 shares at 17
pence per share.
Directors
On 2 February 2001, OTC announced the appointment of a new non-executive
chairman, Tommaso Zanzotto. Mr Zanzotto has extensive experience in global
travel and financial service organizations with previous roles including
President International of American Express Travel Related Services and
Chairman and CEO of Hilton International.
ONLINE TRAVEL CORPORATION PLC
CONSOLIDATED PROFIT AND LOSS ACCOUNT
for the year ended 31 October 2001
January to October
2001 2000
Audited Audited
£'000 £'000 £'000 £'000
Turnover 51,853 20,965
Group and
share of
associates
Turnover 37,279 12,858
(excluding
share of
associates)
Continuing
Acquisitions 8,796 5,624
46,075 18,482
Cost of (38,687) (15,715)
sales
Gross profit 7,388 2,767
Selling and (5,128) (2,688)
distribution
costs
Administration (4,841) (2,617)
costs
Operating (2,699) (2,747)
(loss)/profit
Continuing
Acquisitions 118 209
(2,581) (2,538)
Share of (43) -
associate
company
losses
Interest 63 73
receivable
Interest (7) (23)
payable
Group loss (2,568) (2,488)
on ordinary
activities
before
taxation
Taxation - -
Retained (2,568) (2,488)
loss for
the
financial
year
Loss per Pence Pence
share
- basic (3.5) (3.9)
- fully diluted (3.5) (3.4)
ONLINE TRAVEL CORPORATION PLC
GROUP BALANCE SHEET
at 31 October 2001
2001 2000
£'000 £'000 £'000 £'000
Fixed 2,072 2,039
assets
Intangible
assets -
goodwill
on
consolidation
- purchased goodwill 3,175 -
Tangible 1,776 1,172
assets
Investment 147 40
in
associated
companies
7,170 3,251
Current
assets
Debtors 4,077 3,802
Cash at 2,156 3,336
bank and
in hand
6,233 7,138
Creditors: (5,901) (3,752)
amounts
falling
due
within
one year
Net 332 3,386
current
assets
7,502 6,637
Creditors: (500) (4)
amounts
falling
due after
One year
7,002 6,633
Capital
and
reserves
(equity)
Called up 810 686
share
capital
Share 9,749 6,936
premium
account
Capital 1,499 1,499
reserve
Profit (5,056) (2,488)
and loss
account -
deficit
Shareholders' 7,002 6,633
funds
The financial statements were approved by the Board on 16 January 2002
1. The accounts are prepared in accordance with applicable accounting
policies and under the historical cost convention.
2. The audited preliminary results for the year ended 31 October 2001
are an extract from the latest published audited accounts and do not
constitute statutory accounts as defined in Section 240 of the
Companies Act (as amended). The published audited accounts will be
delivered to the Registrar of Companies and include a report from the
auditors that was unqualified.
3. Basic earnings/(loss) per share has been calculated on the following
basis:
Earnings/(loss) per share Year ended 8 Month period ended
31st October 2001 31st October 2000
Attributable profit/(loss) (2,568) (2,488)
(£'000)
Average number of ordinary 73,367,388 63,208,855
shares in issue ('000)
Number of ordinary shares in 74,199,436 72,242,845
issue and over which options
have been granted
Basic earnings/(loss) per share (3.5)p (3.9)p
(pence)
Fully diluted earnings/(loss) (3.5)p (3.4)p
per share (pence)
4. The Directors do not intend to declare a dividend.
5. A copy of the Statement for the Year ended 31 October 2001 is due to be
sent to all shareholders on or about 11 February 2002. Copies of this
announcement will be available, free of charge for a period of one
month, from the company's Nominated Adviser:
Noble & Company Limited
1 Frederick's Place
London EC2R 8AB
6. To reflect the annual value of transactions 'pro-forma' amounts refer
to total group trading for the year ended 31 October 2001, as if all
acquisitions had taken place on 1 November 2000, and includes 100% of
the turnover of associated companies.
Annual transactional value for the year amounted to £69.7 million
(2000: £33,3 million)
Pro-forma gross profit for the year amounted to £9.7 million. (2000:
£4.0 million). Pro-forma expenditure of £8.7 million (2000 - £7.5
million) over the period was made up of:
£4.0 million on call centre support and customer relationship
management
£1.5 million on sales and marketing including partner profit and
revenue shares
£3.2 million on administration and support services, including the
strengthening of the senior management team and supporting
infrastructure to support anticipated growth.
£1.9 million on web development, depreciation and systems
infrastructure
For further information, please contact:
OTC: Tel 00 44 (0) 20 8255 2247
Mark Jones, Managing Director
Robert Falkner, Finance Director
Durlacher Corporation Plc: Tel 00 44 (0) 20 7459 3600
Nick Martin
Eddie Edmonstone
Noble & Company Limited Tel 00 44 (0) 20 7367 5600
Chris Barker
17 January 2002 END
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