logo-loader

Motivcom eyeing turnaround in events business

Last updated: 01:54 28 Mar 2014 AEDT, First published: 02:54 28 Mar 2014 AEDT

financialnews350_53344a1eb0f4e

A strong performance last year from the incentives and loyalty arm helped Motivcom (LON:MCM) offset a continued decline in the AIM-listed group’s meetings and events management division.

Operating profits were up 72% to £2.6mln in the Motivation division, which was the main driver of profits in 2013 for the business services group.

Winning new clients and keeping existing ones was key to the success of Motivation, which has revelled in the growing demand for ‘employee engagement’ programmes. 

The Promotions division, which together with Motivation makes up part of the incentives and loyalty arm, saw operating profits slide 26% to £773,000 as blue chip companies trim back their marketing budgets.

That is also the problem for the meetings and events arm, which hampered the group’s progress as procurement and a lack of new business took its toll on margins.

Executive director John Sylvester put the shortfall down to a delayed pick-up in marketing expenditure from large corporate groups. 

“There’s a lack of marketing spend from major corporates,” Sylvester told Proactive Investors.

“That seems to be a tone that we’re seeing across the market, where an expected recovery in the marketed services area hasn’t really materialised to the extent that we expected it to in 2013.”

The meetings and events management business saw a 50% fall in operating profits to £892,000.

Overall revenues declined from £106.6mln to £96mln. Even still, operating profits rose 5% to £4.4mln from £4.1mln, prompting a final dividend of 3.6p a share, making a total dividend of 5.4p per share – an increase of 20% on the year before.

The shares retreated 8% to 145p on Thursday, having risen 32% over the last 12 months.


Australian Strategic Materials signs US$600 million LoI

Rowena Smith, CEO and managing director of Australian Strategic Materials Ltd (ASX:ASM, OTC:ASMMF), joins Jonathan Jackson in the Proactive studio to discuss the company’ s Dubbo Project, in Central West New South Wales. This project aims to extract and process critical minerals and rare earth...

10 hours, 30 minutes ago