(Corrects Oct. 1 story to remove reference in fourth paragraphto World Food Moscow exhibition being ITE's largest ever event)
Oct 1(Reuters) - Exhibitions organiser ITE Group Plc said it expected full-year pretax profit to beat marketconsensus, helped by costs cuts and strong fourth-quartertrading.
Shares in the company rose as much as 6 percent in earlytrade on the London Stock Exchange on Wednesday.
The company, which organises over 230 exhibitions andconferences each year, said it had booked revenue of about 60million pounds ($97.18 million) as on Sept. 26, for financialyear 2015.
A strong showing at the World Food Moscow exhibition, andadditional sales to Egypt and Turkey also helped, the companysaid.
"Of key Q4 shows World Food Moscow was of particular notewhere space sales grew an encouraging 4 percent and visitornumbers were up a strong 12 percent," analysts at NumisSecurities said in a note.
The brokerage has a "buy" rating on the stock with a targetprice of 335 pence.
ITE ran 38 events in the fourth quarter, generating revenueof about 29 million pounds, up 7.4 percent from a year earlier.
Analysts on average expect full-year pretax profit at 56.40million pounds, on revenue of 174.68 million pounds, accordingto Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
ITE, however, warned that full-year revenue would dip nearly10 percent to 174 million pounds, hurt by a strong pound in thefourth quarter.
The London-based company, which gets about 70 percentrevenue in roubles and euros, said it continues to experiencecurrency headwinds from both its major trading currencies, whichis expected to impact earnings in 2015.
While like-for-like revenue rose 6 percent on constantcurrency, it fell 7 percent in actual currency terms during thefourth quarter.
Bookings to date, while still in line with managementexpectations, are lower from last year, due to the weak economicenvironment and the political crisis in Ukraine, ITE said.
ITE shares were up 4.4 percent at 177 pence at 0746 GMT.
(1 US dollar = 0.6174 British pound) (Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain and Aastha Agnihotri inBangalore; Editing by Sunil Nair)
