UK and US Growth Key for Confident YouGov

Online research firm YouGov plc has announced interim results for the six months ended 31 January 2012, with organic revenue growth of 12% and adjusted profit before tax of £2.2m. YouGov expects to pay its first dividend, when full year results are out.

The dividend, which the board says reflects its confidence in the firm's position, is good news for Communications company boss Matthew Freud who bought a 3.23% share in YouGov for approximately £2.26m just three weeks ago.

Revenue was £29.9m, up from £27.0m in the same period the previous year. Adjusted Operating Profit Margin fell from 8.0% in the same period the previous year, to 6.8%, and the company still reported a loss before tax of £0.3m, the same as the previous year. However, YouGov says its balance sheet remains strong, with net cash of £10.3m (2011: £10.9m) and points to its investment of £0.7m in teams to support new products and geographical expansion.

The group's business in the USA continued its strong revenue growth with a 35% rise, representing 15% organic growth, while the UK business saw revenue up an impressive 21%. Good progress is reported from Germany, where a new CEO has overseen a return to underlying revenue growth of 9%; and Nordic business saw revenue increased by 13% reflecting. A good rise (26%) in locally-generated business for the Middle Eastern firm Siraj almost compensated for the expected end of a large contract covering Iraq, giving an overall drop of 4%. A French operation opened in October 2011.

The firm noted a strong performance from one of its early innovations, BrandIndex, which it says continues to thrive with a 47% year-on-year revenue increase; and underlined its investment in a range of new products, including new Social Media Analysis and Dashboard-based reporting products, due to be released to the market this month.

CEO Stephan Shakespeare comments: 'YouGov continues to take market share with underlying growth in all of our markets. This strong performance reflects the strength of our core offering as well as our international expansion, notably in the US... We have made targeted investment this year in two important new products, both being launched this month, which significantly advance our syndicated data offering and drive forward our strategic emphasis on real-time flow of business intelligence. These products are SoMA, a social media analysis tool which solves the problem of how to get robust and meaningful data out of Twitter and Facebook 'noise'; and a new reporting tool which brings together all of the existing (and some new) YouGov data streams in a single dashboard for senior executives.'

Web site: www.yougov.com .