Ebiquity Confident On Future Despite Drag From US Performance

LONDON (Alliance News) - Media and market analytics consultancy Ebiquity PLC on Wednesday reported a slight drop in profit despite revenue growth in 2017 as performance in the US holds back the rest of the group.

Ebiquity's revenue rose 4.6% year-on-year in 2017 to GBP87.4 million, and like-for-like growth at constant currency rates was 0.8%. Excluding the Advertising Intelligence business, which is under a sale process, revenue increased 6.7% to GBP64.2 million.

Pretax profit for 2017 fell to GBP4.5 million from GBP6.6 million on a reported basis, and excluding exceptional items the figure slipped to GBP11.0 million from GBP11.8 million.

Ebiquity increased its dividend by 10% to 0.71 pence per share for the year, compared to 0.65p in 2016.

In 2016 Ebiquity launched a growth acceleration plan to achieve a compound annual growth rate of 10% by 2021, and since the period end in February it announced the sale of its Advertising Intelligence business for GBP26.0 million. This business, it said, makes up over 90% of the revenue of its Market Intelligence division.

Market Intelligence revenue in 2017 fell 0.9% to GBP23.1 million, with operating profit down 19% to GBP3.2 million.

Revenue in the Media Value Measurement business rose to GBP51.5 million from GBP47.2 million, and operating profit improved to GBP14.0 million from GBP12.1 million.

However, revenue in the US business in the Media Value Measurement division was "well below" management expectations, Ebiquity said, as clients faced cuts to marketing and advertising budgets, and this held back Ebiquity's overall performance.

In Ebiquity's third division, Marketing Performance Optimisation, revenue was down 2.3% year-on-year to GBP12.7 million and operating profit more than halved to GBP1.6 million.

Ebiquity said action taken to improve the business in 2017 has position it for "faster" revenue growth going ahead, and it expects performance to turnaround in the US in 2018, giving the firm confidence for the future.

Chief Executive Michael Karg commented: "2017 was a year of change for Ebiquity. The planned sale of the Advertising Intelligence business, in particular, was significant and resource intensive. While our financial performance was held back by disappointing results the US, we achieved important milestones on our multi-year transformational journey.

"The underlying changes that we are driving throughout our business are designed to align our services with client-side trends - as well as competitive dynamics - which provide mid to long-term growth opportunities."

Ebiquity shares were up 0.7% on Wednesday at midday at 76.00p each.