Mixed Fortunes for Creston Insight Division

Marketing services group Creston has announced good interim results for the six months to September 2008, with revenue up 5% to £41.3m. The Insight Division saw revenues fall from £9.0m a year ago to £8.5m with smaller MR firms suffering, although its margins remain good.

Headline PBIT margin for the group as a whole was unchanged at 17%, while for the Insight Division the figure was 28% on profits of £2.4m - down from 31% / £2.8m last year but still impressive.

Chairman and CEO Don Elgie highlighted the strength of the group's diversified model; the strong growth of its digital and online marketing services, which now form 25% of revenue; and a record string of new business wins with a high pitch to win ratio, above 50%. The impact of the new business wins, totalling £11m (£5m the previous year) has for the most part yet to be seen in figures.

Elgie said a good performance from larger research firms MSL and ICM had been offset by the underperformance of the division's smallest research companies CML and MSTS, which work on more ad hoc projects in the qualitative, sensory and concept testing sectors and 'therefore have very little visibility'. As a result, MSTS has been merged into MSL. The group says its online research product, newvista research, continues to perform very strongly, with revenue growth of 34%.

Costs of £160,000 were incurred in connection with the abortive offer for the company in September, and another £78,000 in connection with the closure of MSTS as a separate unit.

Web site: www.crestonplc.co.uk .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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