According to Euromoney Institutional Investor:
* Strategy on track, good first-half performance
* Total revenues up 3%, underlying revenues up 4%
* Adjusted profit before tax up 6% to £52.0m
* Statutory profit before tax reflects an exceptional credit of £86.8m (primarily profit on disposal of businesses)
* Benefits from prior year strategic actions driving growth across the Group, particularly in pricing, data & market intelligence.
* Strong growth from events businesses across all sectors, mainly from large, annual events
* Weak asset management performance, largely driven by clients’ reduction in research spend and accelerated by MiFID II
* Significant reduction in net debt since year-end, reflecting the impact of M&A activity and continued strong operating cash flows
* Global Markets Intelligence Division disposal in April expected to generate further net cash of £103m in the second half
* Active portfolio management continues:
o Secured two acquisitions: TowerXchange and Extel
o Completed five disposals: Adhesion, World Bulk Wine Exhibition, Dealogic minority stake, Institutional Investor Journals and Global Markets Intelligence Division
* Interim dividend increased by 16% to 10.2p in line with the new dividend policy announced last year
Commenting on the results, Andrew Rashbass, CEO, said: “These interim results demonstrate further progress with implementing our strategy: investing around big themes; creating a best-of-both- worlds operating model; and active portfolio management. Our continued investment in price discovery has been one of the driv ers of growth in the period, both organically in Metal Bulletin and through the successful integration of RISI. Improved banking and commodity markets together with our focus on large events have helped to mitigate the impact of the challenges facing our investment research businesses, particularly BCA. We continued to sell businesses where we believe we are not the best owners, including the Global Markets Intelligence Division, and secured two bolt-on acquisitions. Overall, we have delivered a good first half performance and the progress we are seeing gives us confidence that we will meet the Board’s expectations for the full year.”
Strategy
Our strategy is to manage a portfolio of businesses in markets where information, data and convening market participants are valued. We deliver products and services that support our clients’ critical activities.
Our strategy is designed to develop the businesses we own and deliver strategic, timely and well-executed acquisitions and disposals. We aim to allocate and recycle capital efficiently to good organic and inorganic opportunities via our ‘best-of-both-worlds’ operating model. Our ambition is to generate consistent and meaningful returns for our shareholders at relatively low risk.
Links / further reading: open full report.
