Moneysupermarket.com posts 10 per cent rise in FY revenue

- Revenue up 10 per cent- Strong performance by Travel and Home Services- Jefferies reiterates 'buy' rating and target priceMoneysupermarket.com Group satisfied investors on Tuesday after its full-year results revealed a 10 per cent rise in revenue and a 30 per cent increase in the final dividend payment. The driving forces of revenue were Travel and Home Services, which helped offset lower revenues in Money as savings revenues continued to be affected by the Bank of England's 'Funding for Lending' scheme. The Insurance business also suffered a slowdown. The price comparison website posted turnover of £225.6m (2012: £204.8m), adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of £84.0m (2012: £66.5m) and a gross margin of 77.8% (2012: 74.1%). Pre-tax profit climbed from £31.54m to £43.1m, while basic earnings per share rose to 6.4p a share from 4.8p a year earlier. This was helped in part by a reduction in the cost of sales of around £3m, as well as a strong result from MoneySavingExpert.com in its first full year of ownership. Peter Plumb, MoneySuperMarket.com Chief Executive Officer, said: "We invested across the business last year and it paid off nicely with higher revenues, profits up 26%, and a dividend that was tripled as we returned over £100m to shareholders."He also said the company was doubling its capital investment for 2014.In the first two months of the year, the group's performance has been "satisfactory", with revenues a mid single digit ahead of the same period in 2013. "Trading within the group has been largely consistent with the trends seen in the fourth quarter of 2013 with strong growth in TravelSupermarket.com and MoneySavingExpert.com, offset by Home Services, where growth rates have slowed," the group added. "Further investment in our core sites and marketing, and a positive outlook on natural search with Google, give the board confidence in the outlook for the full year." The final dividend was increased to 5.12p per share (2012: 3.94p per share). Net debt at the year-end totalled £21.1m (2012: net cash £18.6m), reflecting the payment of a £70m special dividend to shareholders during the year. Broker Jefferies said that "given the EBITDA upside we maintain our 'buy'" along with its 248p price target following what it described as a "solid" statement, although noted that the company was "still suffering though from a hangover from the rather shockingly bad 2013". Shares rose 4.67% to 188.40p early on. NR