Ebiquity returns to the black

Ebiquity, the media and marketing performance measurement business, has pleased its investors by returning to the black.Pre-tax profit for the year ended April 30th came in at £2.64m (2011: £1.78m loss) on revenues of £52.92m that were up 20% on the previous year's £44.17m, boosted by acquisitions in the Analytics business. Platform revenue fell by 5.0%, largely due to the disposal of Newslive, but retention of clients has again been strong and as a result the renewal rate for advertising monitoring has been maintained at 92% in the year. With the Analytics division growing at 9.0%, offset by a marginal decline in the Platform division, total organic revenue grew by 1.0%. The underlying operating profit margin improved from 12% to 16%, primarily because of the impact of the Xtreme acquisition synergies over a full year this time round.Underlying diluted earnings per share were 7.40p (2011: 6.02p), an increase of 23% over the prior year, reflecting the positive impact of the acquisitions and the use of brought forward tax losses. Net debt increased from £4.5m to £12.2m. The share price rose 2.27% to 90p by 10:27.NR