Pre Close Trading Update

RNS Number : 3617K

Wilmington Group Plc

14 July 2011

 



14 July 2011

Wilmington Group plc

Pre Close Period Statement

Wilmington Group plc ('Wilmington' or 'the Group') today announces its pre close trading update.

Trading Performance

The Group's performance for the year to 30 June 2011 is anticipated to be in line with the Board's expectations and broadly in line with that achieved last year.  This is after expensing investment in excess of £1.5m in new product developments, particularly in relation to the Flexible Legal Practice Course, the overseas expansion of our business in the banking and finance sector and in deeper content and enhanced functionality for a number of our information products.   Within this Group result Axco, our insurance information business acquired in September 2010, has performed well, in line with our expectations.

Bank facilities

We were pleased to announce on 27 June 2011 that we had concluded the refinancing of our bank facilities, which were due to mature in March 2012, with a new £65m facility which is committed until February 2016. 

The Group continues to enjoy good cash flow and has a healthy balance sheet.  

Senior Management

Stephen Broome the Chief Operating Officer of the Training & Events division will be retiring from the business after 21 years within the business and we wish him well in his retirement.  Neil Smith, the Chief Operating Officer of the Publishing & Information division, has been appointed as Group Chief Operating Officer.

Acquisition of minority interest

The Group has recently completed the purchase of the remaining 10% minority interest in its subsidiary Beechwood House Publishing Limited ('Beechwood').  Under the terms of the acquisition agreement dated 7 September 2000 as amended by a subsequent agreement dated 16 March 2011, the consideration of £1.82m for the outstanding shares in Beechwood is to be satisfied by the Wilmington issue of 1,289,156 new ordinary shares of 5p each.

Outlook

Our Publishing & Information businesses have generally performed well throughout the economic downturn, proving resilient.  As previously reported we are accelerating our already good progress with the digital evolution of the products and are investing in improved technology and deeper content in our information products to mitigate the declining legacy print products.

Our training businesses have also generally performed well, save for legal training where market conditions  continue to be very challenging and where the downturn has been tougher and more pronounced than anticipated.  As we reported in May we do not expect market conditions in legal training to improve materially in the near future. The investments made in the Flexible Legal Practice Course and in the overseas expansion of our banking and finance business are progressing well and we expect these projects to become profitable in 2012/13 and beyond.

Underlying economic conditions remain difficult, especially in the UK, but we remain confident that despite the challenges faced in the legal training market the Group is well placed to make progress in the coming year.

The Group intends to announce its full year results on 20 September 2011.

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For further information, please contact:

Wilmington Group Plc                      Charles Brady, Chief Executive          Basil Brookes, Finance Director	020 7422 6800
Weber Shandwick Financial	020 7067 0700
Nick Oborne / Stephanie Badjonat

Notes to Editors

Wilmington Group plc is one of the UK's leading providers of information and training for professional business markets. The Group provides training, arranges industry events and publishes directories, databases, magazines and special reports for a variety of markets including the legal, health, accounting, pension, charities, financial and insurance sectors. Capitalised at approximately £98 million, Wilmington floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1995.

 

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