As reported by Centaur Media:
Since the publication of the Company’s Interim Results on 21 July 2021, the Board is pleased to announce that Centaur has continued to experience strong trading conditions enabling it to grow its revenues and adjusted EBITDA across both Xeim and The Lawyer.
Centaur’s Brands continue to perform in line with its Margin Acceleration Plan (MAP23) objectives, notably:
- Econsultancy is seeing subscriptions outperform management expectations, mainly through a sustained level of new business wins and demand for its blended learning proposition. Delivery of its training offering is on track.
- The Marketing Week Mini MBA had another period of high double-digit growth driven by increased delegate numbers and price increases.
- Influencer Intelligence is recovering as its new business and renewal rates are starting to rise following the significant impact of Covid on its smaller PR and fashion customers.
- The Lawyer is ahead of target on corporate renewal rates, while billings are on track for its new Signal product, a subscription service offering in-depth strategic insight and benchmarking of markets, clients and competitors. Recruitment advertising has shown a strong recovery since 2020.
Next week, Centaur will be hosting the pinnacle in its events calendar, the Festival of Marketing: The Year Ahead. The four-day virtual event with live Q&As and video-on-demand will feature over 80 speakers, including the senior marketing leaders of several high profile brands such as Mastercard, Tesco, Coca-Cola, Diageo and Virgin, who will be joined by leading marketing academics Byron Sharp and Mark Ritson, as well as John Cleese, Eddie Izzard and Richard Curtis. The Lawyer is also hosting a number of events in Q4 including next week’s hybrid In-House Counsel as Business Partner and next month’s The Lawyer Awards.
Centaur’s net cash balance stood at £12.4m as at 30 September 2021 (£11.9m as at 30 June 2021).
2021 Full Year Outlook
The Board expects full-year revenues to exceed £37m, a 15% year-on-year increase and at the top end of market expectations. Margins in H2 2021 continue to improve, with adjusted1 EBITDA margin for FY 2021 expected to be approximately 15%.
Xeim, our business unit serving the marketing sector, is expected to report a year-on-year underlying revenue increase of at least 17% with The Lawyer expecting to report an underlying revenue increase of at least 7%.
The Board remains confident in the successful delivery of Centaur’s revenue and EBITDA margin objectives as set out under MAP23.
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