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LONDON (Alliance News) - Retail, promotional and brand experience specialist SpaceandPeople PLC on Friday said its core operations have been trading in line but it will shut down its S&P+ unit after tough recent trading and amid a weak outlook.
S&P+, which operates in a niche sector beyond the company's core retail and promotion businesses, has had medium-term prospects curtailed by delays and cancellations by clients.
As a result, SpaceandPeople said it did not consider it "prudent" to continue funding the venture and will instead wind it down.
This will result in the company booking a GBP275,000 one-off loss, and this will hit pretax profit for 2016 by GBP180,000, leaving the company looking at a pretax loss of GBP200,000 for the full year.
Beyond the S&P+ business, SpaceandPeople said its core retail and promotional operations in the UK and Germany have been trading in line, boosted by new contracts and a strong pipeline of pop-up events in the UK.
"Obviously, we are very disappointed about this outcome and understand the impact this will have on the employees of S&P+, however, the core UK and German promotions and retail businesses are trading in line with our internal expectations and we are very happy with the development of the MPK programme, the rejuvenation of "POP Retail" and the strong pipeline of UK venues with whom we are in discussion about joining our service," said Chief Executive Matthew Bending.
By Sam Unsted; samunsted@alliancenews.com; @SamUAtAlliance
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