Park Group PLC Share News (PKG)

Gift voucher supplier Park Group held its annual general meeting on Thursday, where its Chairman, Peter Johnson, told investors that the strong performance since in the year to March 31st has continued in the months since. Speaking at the meeting the Chairman said the company's internet, social networking and Smartphone presence continues to "advance rapidly" and is investing in the latest technology to keep up-to-date with the latest developments in order to retain its market postion. "The current year has seen a continuation of last year's good progress with savings orders for Christmas 2012 currently at around 6% above the equivalent period last year," he said."Corporate sales are also doing well, currently showing a 13% growth year-on-year while highstreetvouchers.com, our online business, has achieved an impressive 26% year-on-year increase in billings. These figures represent a sound achievement across the group, delivered against the backdrop of a weak economy and cautious consumer spending with customers understandably demanding increased value for money."The next three months, running up to Christmas, will be the busiest period of the year and the order position is very encouraging. The board is confident that these positive indications should allow Park to deliver another year of growth, in-line with market expectations."The company's flexecash product, a pre-paid card launched two years ago, is being developed in a tightly controlled manner, while new applications for the platform are being introduced progressively. The company is now working with customers to build a similar solution that is adapted to their specific needs, which had delivered additonal sales volumes to the group. The value loaded onto the cards is more than double that seen at the same time last year (up 109%), with the value loaded since its launch totalling more than £83m across around 1.7m individual cards. "It is important to stress that the majority of flexecash business is incremental, as demand for our more traditional products is also remaining robust," the firm added. Elsewhere, the company's new e-money products launched since the year end include flexebens, an employee benefit scheme, and flexecodes, which allows users to make retail purchases online, both of which have been well received. The share price rose 6.67% to 56p by the afternoon. NR