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LONDON (Alliance News) - Marketing analytics firm Ebiquity PLC said on Tuesday its pretax profit nearly halved in the first half of 2018, due to one-off M&A costs, despite a rise in revenue.
In addition, Chief Financial Officer Andrew Noble has resigned from his position with immediate effect, but will stay on at the company until December 21 to allow for a smooth transition.
Noble has been chief financial officer at Ebiquity for three years since 2015, and prior to that was chief financial officer at Ipsos Marketing, an arm of market research firm Ipsos MORI for three years from 2012 to 2015.
Ebiquity reported a pretax profit of GBP1.7 million for the six months to the end of June, down from GBP3.2 million the year before, on lower operating profit of GBP2.3 million from GBP3.7 million.
This was due to an exceptional cost of GBP1.9 million, consisting of purchased intangible asset amortisation, share option charges, and costs relation to the proposed sale of the Ad Intel business to Nielsen Media Research Ltd.
Revenue saw a 1.9% increase in the period to GBP45.5 million from GBP44.6 million the prior year as growth in the Media and Analytics & Tech divisions balanced out a 13% fall in the Intel business, due to the focus on its potential sale.
Ebiquity said it is confident in seeing an improved revenue and profit performance for the second half of the year.
"We continue to execute our growth acceleration plan and have made significant progress over the past six months towards achieving faster revenue growth within our Media, Analytics and Tech practices, with encouraging momentum in the US. The performance of Intel has masked a strong half year in these practices," said Chief Executive Officer Michael Karg.
"While the proposed sale of Intel to Nielsen has impacted performance, we are confident in the longer-term market opportunities as clients seek independent advice on how best to allocate and optimise key marketing investments," Karg added.
Shares in Ebiquity were 6.2% at 43.00 pence on Tuesday.
