Pre-Close Trading Statement

RNS Number : 9693D

Iomart Group PLC

31 March 2011

 



iomart Group plc

("iomart" or the "Group")

Pre-close Trading Statement and Notice of Results

iomart Group plc (AIM:IOM), the managed hosting and cloud computing services company, is pleased to provide its pre-close trading statement ahead of the announcement of the full year results.

Group Trading Performance

The Group has achieved a very strong set of results across its operating segments. For the year to 31 March 2011, the Group expects to show an EBITDA¹ in the range of £6.4m to £6.6m. This is ahead of the market consensus, which had already been upgraded three times during the current financial year, including the impact of the acquisition of Titan Internet Limited in October.

Consequently, EBITDA¹ will have more than doubled from the level recorded in the previous financial year.

The Group expects to report a similar increase in PBT over the current market consensus.

Operating Segments

Both the Group's operating segments performed well in the year.

The Hosting segment saw strong growth in the year and benefited from the contribution of Titan Internet, the hosting business acquired during the year. Good progress has been made on the integration of this operation into the Group. As has already been announced, iomart Hosting has continued to win a substantial number of contracts over the year, benefiting from the continued growing momentum of companies seeking to outsource part or all of their IT requirements to the cloud.

The Easyspace segment also delivered a robust performance in terms of both profitability and cash generation, providing a strong platform for the Group.

The Group continues to benefit from high recurring revenues and therefore has good visibility of earnings for the coming year. Barriers to entry remain high as customers are only prepared to trust their mission critical infrastructure to an organisation with a proven reputation.

Angus MacSween, CEO of iomart Group plc, stated:

"Our strong trading in the year is evidence of our ability to capitalise on the significant growth in the managed services market. We believe that the iomart proposition is unique amongst niche managed hosting companies in that it combines over a decade's worth of hosting experience with its own data centre and network infrastructure. We continue to assess opportunities for further consolidation within our market, which combined with our strong levels of organic growth means we believe the prospects for the Group to be extremely positive."

Notice of Results

The Group expects to report its full year results for the year ended 31 March 2011 on 1 June 2011.

For further information:

iomart Group plc	Tel. [phone]
Angus MacSween, Chief Executive
Richard Logan, Finance Director
Peel Hunt	Tel. [phone]
Richard Kauffer
Daniel Harris
Threadneedle Communications	Tel. [phone]
Caroline Evans-Jones
Tom Moriarty
Hilary Millar

¹EBITDA means earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortisation, acquisition costs and share based payments

About iomart Group plc

iomart Group is one of the UK's leading providers of managed hosting services. From a single server through to private cloud networks, iomart specialises in the delivery and management of mission-critical hosting services, enabling customers to reduce the costs, complexity and risks associated with maintaining their own web and online applications.

By physically owning and managing its own network infrastructure, including five state-of-the-art data centres in the UK, iomart offers world-beating levels of service to its customers. The Group offers a unique 100% uptime guarantee with all hosting services being engineered to ensure no single point of failure.

Services offered include: Managed Hosting, Colocation, Complex Hosting solutions, Content Delivery Networks, IP Transit, Data Centre Services and Cloud Computing (Infrastructure as a Service).

For further information about the Group, please visit www.iomart.com

 

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