LONDON (Alliance News) - Business exhibitions firm ITE Group PLC said Tuesday its half-year profit fell amid restructuring costs despite its revenue rising on a reported and like-for-like basis as its looks forward to closing its buyout of Ascential PLC's exhibition business.
For the six months ended March, pretax profit narrowed to GBP1.3 million from GBP3.1 million the year prior. This was despite revenue growing to GBP75.4 million from GBP69.6 million the year before.
Profit performance was hurt by a rise in exceptional items during the year to GBP14.8 million from GBP12.3 million the year prior. The rise in exceptional costs was chiefly due to restructuring costs under its Transformation & Growth Programme and the de-recognition of goodwill after its RAS Publishing business stopped trading.
Adjusted pretax profit - excluding exceptional costs - expanded to GBP16.1 million from GBP15.4 million the year before.
ITE declared a 1.5 pence per share interim dividend, flat on the year prior.
"We are seeing the benefits from a number of our early initiatives in the TAG programme which has driven a return to revenue growth in most of our markets," ITE Chief Executive Officer Mark Shashoua said. "Overall, revenues were up 8% on a like-for-like basis and, encouragingly, the focus on operational rigour on our Core events delivered the first like-for-like volume and yield growth since 2014. Consistent with this, the four top 10 shows that took place during the first half collectively delivered double digit revenue growth.
"As a result of our focus on forward bookings, we have good visibility into this year and next with revenues booked for 2018 at 89% of consensus for the full year and, on a like-for-like basis, bookings for 2019 are up 31% at GBP31.0 million."
Separately on Tuesday, ITE announced it was to acquire the exhibitions portfolio of Ascential PLC for GBP300 million. The deal will be primarily financed through a rights issue.
Shashoua - who described the acquired exhibitions as "highly complementary" to its current business - are "well known to us, the acquisition is in line with our product-led acquisition strategy and gives us the benefit of a more balanced portfolio by geography and product. It also adds two more global brands in BETT and CWIEME and is expected to be earnings enhancing in 2019, our first full financial year of ownership."
Shares in ITE were 3.4% lower at 140.80 pence on Tuesday.
