Creston Reports Comms and Insight Revenue Rise

Marcoms group Creston has reported an 8% increase in revenue to £40.3m for the six months ended 30th September 2015, while its Communications & Insight division saw revenue rise 14% to £30.6m and headline PBIT increase by 24% to £4.0m.

Reported PBIT for the Communications & Insight division was £1.2m (H1 2015: £3.2m) due to acquisition related costs and accounting, investments in a number of start-ups and an impairment charge following the closure of ICM Research subsidiary Fieldwork UK. The firm said the decision to close the latter business was made following declining demand for face-to-face market research data collection services.

For the Health division, H1 2016 revenue and headline PBIT both fell 6% - to £9.7m and £1.6m respectively. During the period, Creston launched Search Unlimited, a specialist search engine optimisation and marketing agency for the healthcare sector.

Overall for the group, like-for-like revenue growth was 1% at £37.7m (H1 2015: £37.3m) and headline PBIT rose 8% to £4.2m. CEO Barrie Brien (pictured) says the group has continued to make good progress against its five-year strategy, broadening the Unlimited brand offer, which has helped the business report year-on-year growth across revenue, headline PBT and dividend, while underpinning strong new business performance.

Web sites: www.creston.com and www.creston-unlimited.com .